Robert Mc Kee Story (pdf)

Substance, Structure, Style,
and the Principles of Screenwriting

ROBERT MCKEE

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story. Copyright © 1997 by Robert McKee. All rights reserved. Printed in the
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FIRST EDITION

Designed by Laura Lindgren

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McKee, Robert, 1941-

Story: substance, structure, style, and the principles of screenwriting /
Robert McKee,
p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: 0-06-039168-5

1. Motion picture authorship. 2. Motion picture plays—Technique. I. Title.
PN 1996.M465 1997

808.23—dc2i

97 98 99 00 01 */ RR D 10 987654321

97-24139

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments / ix
Notes on the Text / xi

parti: THE WRITER AND THE ART OF STORY
Introduction / 3

1. The Story Problem / 11

part 2: THE ELEMENTS OF STORY

2. The Structure Spectrum / 31

3. Structure and Setting / 67

4. Structure and Genre / 79

5. Structure and Character / 100

6. Structure and Meaning / no

part 3: THE PRINCIPLES OF STORY DESIGN

7. The Substance of Story / 135

8. The Inciting Incident / 181

9. Act Design / 208

10. Scene Design / 233

11. Scene Analysis / 252

12. Composition / 288

13. Crisis, Climax, Resolution / 303

part 4: THE WRITER AT WORK

14. The Principle of Antagonism / 317

15. Exposition / 334

16. Problems and Solutions / 346

17. Character / 374

18. The Text / 388

19. A Writer’s Method / 410
Fade Out / 418

Suggested Readings / 421
Filmography / 423
Index / 457

PART I

i nt

WRITER
AND THE
ART OF
STORY

Stories are equipment for living.
— Kenneth Burke

INTRODUCTION

Story is about principles, not rules.

A rule says, “You must do it this way .” A principle says, “This works
. . . and has through all remembered time.” The difference is cru¬
cial. Your work needn't be modeled after the “well-made” play;
rather, it must be well made within the principles that shape our art.
Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled
writers break rules. Artists master the form.

Story is about eternal, universal forms, not formulas.

All notions of paradigms and foolproof story models for commer¬
cial success are nonsense. Despite trends, remakes, and sequels, when
we survey the totality of Hollywood film, we find an astounding variety
of story designs, but no prototype. DIE HARD is no more typical of
Hollywood than are PARENTHOOD, POSTCARDS FROM THE
EDGE, THE LION KING, THIS IS SPINAL TAP, REVERSAL OF
FORTUNE, DANGEROUS LIAISONS, GROUNDHOG DAY,
LEAVING LAS VEGAS, or thousands of other excellent films in
dozens of genres and subgenres from farce to tragedy.

Story urges the creation of works that will excite audiences on
the six continents and live in revival for decades. No one needs yet
another recipe book on how to reheat Hollywood leftovers. We
need a rediscovery of the underlying tenets of our art, the guiding
principles that liberate talent. No matter where a film is made—
Hollywood, Paris, Hong Kong—if it’s of archetypal quality, it trig¬
gers a global and perpetual chain reaction of pleasure that carries it
from cinema to cinema, generation to generation.

3

4 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

Story is about archetypes, not stereotypes.

The archetypal story unearths a universally human experience,
then wraps itself inside a unique, culture-specific expression. A
stereotypical story reverses this pattern: It suffers a poverty of both
content and form. It confines itself to a narrow, culture-specific
experience and dresses in stale, nonspecific generalities.

For example, Spanish custom once dictated that daughters
must be married off in order from oldest to youngest. Inside
Spanish culture, a film about the nineteenth-century family of a
strict patriarch, a powerless mother, an unmarriageable oldest
daughter, and a long-suffering youngest daughter may move those
who remember this practice, but outside Spanish culture audi¬
ences are unlikely to empathize. The writer, fearing his story's
limited appeal, resorts to the familiar settings, characters, and
actions that have pleased audiences in the past. The result? The
world is even less interested in these cliches.

On the other hand, this repressive custom could become mate¬
rial for a worldwide success if the artist were to roll up his sleeves
and search for an archetype. An archetypal story creates settings
and characters so rare that our eyes feast on every detail, while its
telling illuminates conflicts so true to humankind that it journeys
from culture to culture.

In Laura Esquivel’s LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE, mother
and daughter clash over the demands of dependence versus inde¬
pendence, permanence versus change, self versus others—con¬
flicts every family knows. Yet Esquivel’s observation of home and
society, of relationship and behavior is so rich in never-before-seen
detail, we’re drawn irresistibly to these characters and fascinated by
a realm we’ve never known, nor could imagine.

Stereotypical stories stay at home, archetypal stories travel.
From Charlie Chaplin to Ingmar Bergman, from Satyajit Ray to
Woody Allen, the cinema’s master storytellers give us the double-
edged encounter we crave. First, the discovery of a world we do not
know. No matter how intimate or epic, contemporary or historical,
concrete or fantasized, the world of an eminent artist always strikes

INTRODUCTION * 5

us as somewhat exotic or strange. Like an explorer parting forest
leaves, we step wide-eyed into an untouched society, a cliche-free
zone where the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Second, once inside this alien world, we find ourselves. Deep
within these characters and their conflicts we discover our own
humanity. We go to the movies to enter a new, fascinating world,
to inhabit vicariously another human being who at first seems so
unlike us and yet at heart is like us, to live in a fictional reality that
illuminates our daily reality. We do not wish to escape life but to
find life, to use our minds in fresh, experimental ways, to flex our
emotions, to enjoy, to learn, to add depth to our days. Story was
written to foster films of archetypal power and beauty that will give
the world this dual pleasure.

Story is about thoroughness, not shortcuts.

From inspiration to last draft you may need as much time to
write a screenplay as to write a novel. Screen and prose writers
create the same density of world, character, and story, but because
screenplay pages have so much white on them, we're often mis¬
lead into thinking that a screenplay is quicker and easier than a
novel. But while scribomaniacs fill pages as fast as they can type,
film writers cut and cut again, ruthless in their desire to express
the absolute maximum in the fewest possible words. Pascal once
wrote a long, drawn-out letter to a friend, then apologized in the
postscript that he didn’t have time to write a short one. Like
Pascal, screenwriters learn that economy is key, that brevity takes
time, that excellence means perseverance.

Story is about the realities, not the mysteries of writing.

There’s been no conspiracy to keep secret the truths of our art.
In the twenty-three centuries since Aristotle wrote The Poetics, the
“secrets” of story have been as public as the library down the street.
Nothing in the craft of storytelling is abstruse. In fact, at first
glance telling story for the screen looks deceptively easy. But

6 4 ROBERT MCKEE

moving closer and closer to the center, trying scene by scene to
make the story work, the task becomes increasingly difficult, as we
realize that on the screen there’s no place to hide.

If a screenwriter fails to move us with the purity of a drama¬
tized scene, he cannot, like a novelist in authorial voice, or the play¬
wright in soliloquy, hide behind his words. He cannot smooth a
coating of explanatory or emotive language over cracks in logic,
blotchy motivation, or colorless emotion and simply tell us what to
think or how to feel.

The camera is the dread X-ray machine of all things false. It
magnifies life many times over, then strips naked every weak or
phony story turn, until in confusion and frustration we're tempted
to quit. Yet, given determination and study, the puzzle yields.
Screenwriting is full of wonders but no unsolvable mysteries.

Story is about mastering the art, not second-guessing

the marketplace.

No one can teach what will sell, what won’t, what will be a
smash or a fiasco, because no one knows. Hollywood’s bombs are
made with the same commercial calculation as its hits, whereas
darkish dramas that read like a checklist of everything moneyed
wisdom says you must never do—ORDINARY PEOPLE, THE
ACCIDENTAL TOURIST, TRAINSPOTTING—quietly conquer
the domestic and international box office. Nothing in our art is
guaranteed. That’s why so many agonize over “breaking in,”
“making it," and “creative interference.”

The honest, big-city answer to all these fears is that you’ll get
an agent, sell your work, and see it realized faithfully on screen
when you write with surpassing quality . . . and not until. If you
knock out a knockoff of last summer’s hit, you’ll join the ranks of
lesser talents who each year flood Hollywood with thousands of
cliche-ridden stories. Rather than agonizing over the odds, put your
energies into achieving excellence. If you show a brilliant, original
screenplay to agents, they’ll fight for the right to represent you. The
agent you hire will incite a bidding war among story-starved pro-

INTRODUCTION + 7

ducers, and the winner will pay you an embarrassing amount of
money.

What’s more, once in production, your finished screenplay will
meet with surprisingly little interference. No one can promise that
unfortunate conjunctions of personalities won’t spoil good work,
but be certain that Hollywood’s best acting and directing talents are
acutely aware that their careers depend on working within quality
writing. Yet because of Hollywood’s ravenous appetite for story,
scripts are often picked before they’re ripe, forcing changes on the
set. Secure writers don’t sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until
the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfin¬
ished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its
integrity.

Story is about respect, not disdain, for the audience.

When talented people write badly it’s generally for one of two
reasons: Either they’re blinded by an idea they feel compelled to
prove or they’re driven by an emotion they must express. When tal¬
ented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They’re
moved by a desire to touch the audience.

Night after night, through years of performing and directing,
I’ve stood in awe of the audience, of its capacity for response. As if
by magic, masks fall away, faces become vulnerable, receptive.
Filmgoers do not defend their emotions, rather they open to the
storyteller in ways even their lovers never know, welcoming
laughter, tears, terror, rage, compassion, passion, love, hate—the
ritual often exhausts them.

The audience is not only amazingly sensitive, but as it settles
into a darkened theatre its collective IQ jumps twenty-five points.
When you go to the movies, don’t you often feel you’re more intel¬
ligent than what you’re watching? That you know what characters
are going to do before they do it? That you see the ending coming
long before it arrives? The audience is not only smart, it’s smarter
than most films, and that fact won’t change when you move to the
other side of the screen. It’s all a writer can do, using every bit of

8 * ROBERT MCKEE

craft he’s mastered, to keep ahead of the sharp perceptions of a
focused audience.

No film can be made to work without an understanding of the
reactions and anticipations of the audience. You must shape your
story in a way that both expresses your vision and satisfies the audi¬
ence's desires. The audience is a force as determining of story
design as any other element. For without it, the creative act is
pointless.

Story is about originality, not duplication.

Originality is the confluence of content and form—distinctive
choices of subject plus a unique shaping of the telling. Content
(setting, characters, ideas) and form (selection and arrangement of
events) require, inspire, and mutually influence one another. With
content in one hand and a mastery of form in the other, a writer
sculpts story. As you rework a story's substance, the telling
reshapes itself. As you play with a story’s shape, its intellectual and
emotional spirit evolves.

A story is not only what you have to say but how you say it. If
content is cliche, the telling will be cliche. But if your vision is deep
and original, your story design will be unique. Conversely, if the
telling is conventional and predictable, it will demand stereotypical
roles to act out well-worn behaviors. But if the story design is inno¬
vative, then settings, characters, and ideas must be equally fresh to
fulfill it. We shape the telling to fit the substance, rework the sub¬
stance to support the design.

Never, however, mistake eccentricity for originality. Difference
for the sake of difference is as empty as slavishly following com¬
mercial imperatives. After working for months, perhaps years, to
gather facts, memories, and imagination into a treasury of story
material, no serious writer would cage his vision inside a formula,
or trivialize it into avant-garde fragmentations. The “well-made”
formula may choke a story’s voice, but “art movie” quirkiness will
give it a speech impediment. Just as children break things for fun
or throw tantrums to force attention on themselves, too many film-

INTRODUCTION + 9

makers use infantile gimmicks on screen to shout, “Look what I
can do!” A mature artist never calls attention to himself, and a wise
artist never does anything merely because it breaks convention.

Films by masters such as Horton Foote, Robert Altman, John
Cassavetes, Preston Sturges, Francois Truffaut, and Ingmar
Bergman are so idiosyncratic that a three-page synopsis identifies
the artist as surely as his DNA. Great screenwriters are distin¬
guished by a personal storytelling style, a style that’s not only
inseparable from their vision, but in a profound way is their
vision. Their formal choices—number of protagonists, rhythm of
progressions, levels of conflict, temporal arrangements, and the
like—play with and against substantive choices of content—set¬
ting, character, idea—until all elements meld into a unique
screenplay.

If, however, we were to put the content of their films aside for
the moment, and study the pure patterning of their events, we’d
see that, like a melody without a lyric, like a silhouette without a
matrix, their story designs are powerfully charged with meaning.
The storyteller’s selection and arrangement of events is his master
metaphor for the interconnectedness of all the levels of reality—
personal, political, environmental, spiritual. Stripped of its surface
of characterization and location, story structure reveals his personal
cosmology, his insight into the deepest patterns and motivations
for how and why things happen in this world—his map of life’s
hidden order.

No matter who your heroes may be—Woody Allen, David
Mamet, Quentin Tarantino, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Oliver Stone,
William Goldman, Zhang Yimou, Nora Ephron, Spike Lee, Stanley
Kubrick—you admire them because they’re unique. Each has
stepped out of the crowd because each selects a content like no one
else, designs a form like no one else, combining the two into a style
unmistakably his own. I want the same for you.

But my hope for you goes beyond competence and skill. I’m
starved for great films. Over the last two decades I’ve seen good
films and a few very good films, but rarely, rarely a film of stag¬
gering power and beauty. Maybe it’s me; maybe I’m jaded. But I

10 « ROBERT MCKEE

don’t think so. Not yet. I still believe that art transforms life. But I
know that if you can’t play all the instruments in the orchestra of
story, no matter what music may be in your imagination, you’re
condemned to hum the same old tune. I’ve written Story to
empower your command of the craft, to free you to express an orig¬
inal vision of life, to lift your talent beyond convention to create
films of distinctive substance, structure, and style.

1

THE STORY PROBLEM

THE DECLINE OF STORY

Imagine, in one global day, the pages of prose turned, plays per¬
formed, films screened, the unending stream of television comedy
and drama, twenty-four-hour print and broadcast news, bedtime
tales told to children, barroom bragging, back-fence Internet
gossip, humankind’s insatiable appetite for stories. Story is not
only our most prolific art form but rivals all activities—work, play,
eating, exercise—for our waking hours. We tell and take in stories
as much as we sleep—and even then we dream. Why? Why is so
much of our life spent inside stories? Because as critic Kenneth
Burke tells us, stories are equipment for living.

Day after day we seek an answer to the ageless question Aris¬
totle posed in Ethics: How should a human being lead his life? But
the answer eludes us, hiding behind a blur of racing hours as we
struggle to fit our means to our dreams, fuse idea with passion,
turn desire into reality. We're swept along on a risk-ridden shuttle
through time. If we pull back to grasp pattern and meaning, life,
like a Gestalt, does flips: first serious, then comic; static, frantic;
meaningful, meaningless. Momentous world events are beyond
our control while personal events, despite all effort to keep our
hands on the wheel, more often than not control us.

Traditionally humankind has sought the answer to Aristotle’s
question from the four wisdoms—philosophy, science, religion,
art—taking insight from each to bolt together a livable meaning.

ii

12 + ROBERT MCKEE

But today who reads Hegel or Kant without an exam to pass? Sci¬
ence, once the great explicator, garbles life with complexity and per¬
plexity. Who can listen without cynicism to economists, sociologists,
politicians? Religion, for many, has become an empty ritual that
masks hypocrisy. As our faith in traditional ideologies diminishes,
we turn to the source we still believe in: the art of story.

The world now consumes films, novels, theatre, and television
in such quantities and with such ravenous hunger that the story
arts have become humanity’s prime source of inspiration, as it
seeks to order chaos and gain insight into life. Our appetite for
story is a reflection of the profound human need to grasp the pat¬
terns of living, not merely as an intellectual exercise, but within a
very personal, emotional experience. In the words of playwright
Jean Anouilh, “Fiction gives life its form.”

Some see this craving for story as simple entertainment, an
escape from life rather than an exploration of it. But what, after all,
is entertainment? To be entertained is to be immersed in the cere¬
mony of story to an intellectually and emotionally satisfying end.
To the film audience, entertainment is the ritual of sitting in the
dark, concentrating on a screen in order to experience the story’s
meaning and, with that insight, the arousal of strong, at times even
painful emotions, and as the meaning deepens, to be carried to the
ultimate satisfaction of those emotions.

Whether it’s the triumph of crazed entrepreneurs over Hittite
demons in GHOSTBUSTERS or the complex resolution of inner
demons in SHINE: the integration of character in THE RED DESERT
or its disintegration in THE CONVERSATION, all fine films, novels,
and plays, through all shades of the comic and tragic, entertain when
they give the audience a fresh model of life empowered with an affec¬
tive meaning. To retreat behind the notion that the audience simply
wants to dump its troubles at the door and escape reality is a cowardly
abandonment of the artist’s responsibility. Story isn’t a flight from
reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality, our best
effort to make sense out of the anarchy of existence.

Yet, while the ever-expanding reach of the media now gives us
the opportunity to send stories beyond borders and languages to hun-

THE STORY PROBLEM ♦ 13

dreds of millions, the overall quality of storytelling is eroding. On
occasion we read or see works of excellence, but for the most part we
weary of searching newspaper ads, video shops, and TV listings for
something of quality, of putting down novels half-read, of slipping
out of plays at the intermission, of walking out of films soothing our
disappointment with “But it was beautifully photographed . . ” The
art of story is in decay, and as Aristotle observed twenty-three hun¬
dred years ago, when storytelling goes bad, the result is decadence.

Flawed and false storytelling is forced to substitute spectacle for
substance, trickery for truth. Weak stories, desperate to hold audi¬
ence attention, degenerate into multimillion-dollar razzle-dazzle
demo reels. In Hollywood imagery becomes more and more extrav¬
agant, in Europe more and more decorative. The behavior of actors
becomes more and more histrionic, more and more lewd, more
and more violent. Music and sound effects become increasingly
tumultuous. The total effect transudes into the grotesque. A culture
cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When society
repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degen¬
erates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that
shine a clean light into the dingy comers of the human psyche and
society. If not, as Yeats warned,"... the centre can not hold.”

Each year, Hollywood produces and/or distributes four hun¬
dred to five hundred films, virtually a film per day. A few are excel¬
lent, but the majority are mediocre or worse. The temptation is to
blame this glut of banality on the Babbitt-like figures who approve
productions. But recall a moment from THE PLAYER: Tim Rob¬
bins’s young Hollywood executive explains that he has many ene¬
mies because each year his studio accepts over twenty thousand
story submissions but only makes twelve films. This is accurate
dialogue. The story departments of the major studios pore through
thousands upon thousands of scripts, treatments, novels, and plays
searching for a great screen story. Or, more likely, something
halfway to good that they could develop to better-than-average.

By the 1990s script development in Hollywood climbed to over
$500 million per annum, three quarters of which is paid to writers
for options and rewrites on films that will never be made. Despite a

14 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

half-billion dollars and the exhaustive efforts of development per¬
sonnel, Hollywood cannot find better material than it produces. The
hard-to-believe truth is that what we see on the screen each year is a
reasonable reflection of the best writing of the last few years.

Many screenwriters, however, cannot face this downtown fact
and live in the exurbs of illusion, convinced that Hollywood is blind
to their talent. With rare exceptions, unrecognized genius is a
myth. First-rate screenplays are at least optioned if not made. For
writers who can tell a quality story, it’s a seller’s market—always
has been, always will be. Hollywood has a secure international
business for hundreds of films each year, and they will be made.
Most will open, run a few weeks, close, and be mercifully forgotten.

Yet Hollywood not only survives, it thrives, because it has virtu¬
ally no competition. This wasn’t always the case. From the rise of
Neo-realism to the high tide of the New Wave, North American cin¬
emas were crowded with works by brilliant Continental filmmakers
that challenged Hollywood's dominance. But with the death or
retirement of these masters, the last twenty-five years have seen a
slow decay in the quality of European films.

Today European filmmakers blame their failure to attract audi¬
ence on a conspiracy of distributors. Yet the films of their predeces¬
sors—Renoir, Bergman, Fellini, Bunuel, Wajda, Clouzot, Antonioni,
Resnais—were screened throughout the world. The system hasn’t
changed. The audience for non-Hollywood film is still vast and loyal.
Distributors have the same motivation now they had then: money.
What’s changed is that contemporary “auteurs” cannot tell story with
the power of the previous generation. Like pretentious interior deco¬
rators, they make films that strike the eye, and nothing more. As a
result, the storm of European genius has become a slough of arid
films that leave a vacuum for Hollywood to fill.

Asian works, however, now travel throughout North America
and the world, moving and delighting millions, seizing the interna¬
tional spotlight with ease for one reason: Asian filmmakers tell
superb stories. Rather than scapegoating distributors, non-Hollywood
filmmakers would do well to look to the East, where artists have the
passion to tell stories and the craft to tell them beautifully.

THE STORY PROBLEM * 15

THE LOSS OF CRAFT

The art of story is the dominant cultural force in the world, and the
art of film is the dominant medium of this grand enterprise. The
world audience is devoted but thirsting for story. Why? Not from a
poverty of effort. The Writers Guild of America script registration
service logs over thirty-five thousand titles yearly. These are only
those that are registered. Across America hundreds of thousands of
screenplays are attempted each year, but only a handful are quality
screenplays, for many reasons but this above all: Today's would-be
writers rush to the typewriter without first learning their craft.

If your dream were to compose music, would you say to your¬
self: “I've heard a lot of symphonies ... I can also play the piano . . .
I think I’ll knock one out this weekend”? No. But that's exactly how
many screenwriters begin: “I've seen a lot of flicks, some good and
some bad ... I got A's in English . . . vacation time’s coming ...”

If you hoped to compose, you’d head for music school to study
both theory and practice, focusing on the genre of symphony. After
years of diligence, you’d merge your knowledge with your cre¬
ativity, flex your courage, and venture to compose. Too many strug¬
gling writers never suspect that the creation of a fine screenplay is
as difficult as the creation of a symphony, and in some ways more
so. For while the composer scores with the mathematical purity of
notes, we dip into the messy stuff known as human nature.

The novice plunges ahead, counting solely on experience,
thinking that the life he's lived and the films he’s seen give him
something to say and the way to say it. Experience, however, is
overrated. Of course we want writers who don’t hide from life, who
live deeply, observe closely. This is vital but never enough. For
most writers, the knowledge they gain from reading and study
equals or outweighs experience, especially if that experience goes
unexamined. Self-knowledge is the key—life plus deep reflection on
our reactions to life.

As for technique, what the novice mistakes for craft is simply
his unconscious absorption of story elements from every novel,
film, or play he's ever encountered. As he writes, he matches his

l6 * ROBERT MCKEE

work by trial and error against a model built up from accumulated
reading and watching. The unschooled writer calls this “instinct,”
but it's merely habit and it’s rigidly limiting. He either imitates his
mental prototype or imagines himself in the avant-garde and rebels
against it. But the haphazard groping toward or revolt against the
sum of unconsciously ingrained repetitions is not, in any sense,
technique, and leads to screenplays clogged with cliches of either
the commercial or the art house variety.

This hit-or-miss struggle wasn’t always the case. In decades
past screenwriters learned their craft either through university
study or on their own in a library, through experience in the theatre
or in writing novels, through apprenticeship to the Hollywood
studio system, or through a combination of these means.

Early in this century a number of American universities came
to believe that, like musicians and painters, writers need the equiv¬
alent of music or art school to learn the principles of their craft. To
that end scholars such as William Archer, Kenneth Rowe, and John
Howard Lawson wrote excellent books on dramaturgy and the
prose arts. Their method was intrinsic, drawing strength from the
big-muscle movements of desire, forces of antagonism, turning
points, spine, progression, crisis, climax —story seen from the inside
out. Working writers, with or without formal educations, used
these texts to develop their art, turning the half-century from the
Roaring Twenties through the protesting sixties into a golden age
of the American story on screen, page, and stage.

Over the last twenty-five years, however, the method of
teaching creative writing in American universities has shifted from
the intrinsic to the extrinsic. Trends in literary theory have drawn
professors away from the deep sources of story toward language,
codes, text —story seen from the outside. As a result, with some
notable exceptions, the current generation of writers has been
undereducated in the prime principles of story.

Screenwriters abroad have had even less opportunity to study
their craft. European academics generally deny that writing can, in
any sense, be taught, and as a result, courses in Creative Writing
have never been included in the curriculum of Continental univer-

THE STORY PROBLEM 4 17

sities. Europe does, of course, foster many of the world’s most bril¬
liant art and music academies. Why it’s felt that one art is teach¬
able, another not, is impossible to say. What’s worse, disdain for
screenwriting has, until recently, excluded it from study in all Euro¬
pean film schools save Moscow and Warsaw.

Much can be said against the old Hollywood studio system, but
to its credit it was a system of apprenticeship overseen by seasoned
story editors. That day is gone. Every now and then a studio redis¬
covers apprenticeship, but in its zeal to bring back the golden days
it forgets that an apprentice needs a master. Today’s executives
may recognize ability, but few have the skill or patience to turn a
talent into an artist.

The final cause for the decline of story runs very deep. Values,
the positive/negative charges of life, are at the soul of our art. The
writer shapes story around a perception of what's worth living for,
what's worth dying for, what's foolish to pursue, the meaning of
justice, truth—the essential values. In decades past, writer and
society more or less agreed on these questions, but more and more
ours has become an age of moral and ethical cynicism, relativism,
and subjectivism—a great confusion of values. As the family disin¬
tegrates and sexual antagonisms rise, who, for example, feels he
understands the nature of love? And how, if you do have a convic¬
tion, do you express it to an ever-more skeptical audience?

This erosion of values has brought with it a corresponding ero¬
sion of story. Unlike writers in the past, we can assume nothing.
First we must dig deeply into life to uncover new insights, new
refinements of value and meaning, then create a story vehicle that
expresses our interpretation to an increasingly agnostic world. No
small task.

THE STORY IMPERATIVE

When I moved to Los Angeles, I did what many do to keep eating
and writing—I read. I worked for UA and NBC, analyzing screen
and teleplay submissions. After the first couple hundred analyses, I
felt I could write up in advance an all-purpose Hollywood story ana-

18 4 ROBERT MCKEE

lyst’s coverage and just fill in title and writer. The report I wrote
over and over again went like this:

Nice description, actable dialogue. Some amusing moments; some
sensitive moments. All in all, a script of well-chosen words. The story,
however, sucks. The first thirty pages crawl on a fat belly of exposi¬
tion; the rest never get to their feet. The main plot, what there is of it,
is riddled with convenient coincidence and weak motivation. No dis¬
cernible protagonist. Unrelated tensions that could shape into sub¬
plots never do. Characters are never revealed to be more than they
seem. Not a moment's insight into the inner lives of these people or
their society. It's a lifeless collection of predictable, ill-told, and
cliched episodes that wander off into a pointless haze. PASS ON IT.

But I never wrote this report:

Great story! Grabbed me on page one and held me in its embrace.

The first act builds to a sudden climax that spins off into a superb
weave of plot and subplot. Sublime revelations of deep character.
Amazing insight into this society. Made me laugh, made me cry.
Drove to an Act Two climax so moving that I thought the story
was over. And yet, out of the ashes of the second act, this writer cre¬
ated a third act of such power, such beauty, such magnificence I'm
writing this report from the floor. However, this script is a 270-page
grammatical nightmare with every fifth word misspelled. Dia¬
logue's so tangled Olivier couldn't get his tongue around it.
Descriptions are stuffed with camera directions, subtextural expla¬
nations, and philosophical commentary. It’s not even typed in the
proper format. Obviously not a professional writer. PASS ON IT.

If I'd written this report, I’d have lost my job.

The sign on the door doesn’t read “Dialogue Department” or
“Description Department.” It reads “Story Department.” A good
story makes a good film possible, while failure to make the story
work virtually guarantees disaster. A reader who can’t grasp this
fundamental deserves to be fired. It's surprisingly rare, in fact, to

THE STORY PROBLEM « 19

find a beautifully crafted story with bad dialogue or dull descrip¬
tion. More often than not, the better the storytelling, the more vivid
the images, the sharper the dialogue. But lack of progression, false
motivation, redundant characters, empty subtext, holes, and other
such story problems are the root causes of a bland, boring text.

Literary talent is not enough. If you cannot tell a story, all those
beautiful images and subtleties of dialogue that you spent months
and months perfecting waste the paper they’re written on. What we
create for the world, what it demands of us, is story. Now and for¬
ever. Countless writers lavish dressy dialogue and manicured
descriptions on anorexic yarns and wonder why their scripts never
see production, while others with modest literary talent but great
storytelling power have the deep pleasure of watching their dreams
living in the light of the screen.

Of the total creative effort represented in a finished work, 75
percent or more of a writer’s labor goes into designing story. Who
are these characters? What do they want? Why do they want it?
How do they go about getting it? What stops them? What are the
consequences? Finding the answers to these grand questions and
shaping them into story is our overwhelming creative task.

Designing story tests the maturity and insight of the writer, his
knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart. Story demands
both vivid imagination and powerful analytic thought. Self-expression
is never an issue, for, wittingly or unwittingly, all stories, honest
and dishonest, wise and foolish, faithfully mirror their maker,
exposing his humanity ... or lack of it. Compared to this terror,
writing dialogue is a sweet diversion.

So the writer embraces the principle. Tell Story . . . then
freezes. For what is story? The idea of story is like the idea of
music. We’ve heard tunes all our lives. We can dance and sing
along. We think we understand music until we try to compose it
and what comes out of the piano scares the cat.

If both TENDER MERCIES and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
are wonderful stories beautifully told for the screen—and they are—
what on earth do they have in common? If HANNAH AND HER
SISTERS and MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL are both

20 « ROBERT MCKEE

brilliant comic stories delightfully told, and they are, where do they
touch? Compare THE CRYING GAME to PARENTHOOD, TERMI¬
NATOR to REVERSAL OF FORTUNE, UNFORGIVEN to EAT
DRINK MAN WOMAN. Or A FISH CALLED WANDA to MAN
BITES DOG, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT to RESERVOIR
DOGS. Moving back through the decades, compare VERTIGO to 872
to PERSONA to RASHOMON to CASABLANCA to GREED to
MODERN TIMES to THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN—all superb
screen stories, all vastly different, yet all produce the same result: an
audience leaving the theatre exclaiming, “What a great story!”

Drowning in a sea of genres and styles, the writer may come to
believe that if all these films tell story, then anything can be a story.
But if we look deeply, if we strip away the surface, we find that at
heart all are the same thing. Each is an embodiment of the uni¬
versal form of story. Each articulates this form to the screen in a
unique way, but in each the essential form is identical, and it is to
this deep form that the audience is responding when it reacts with,
“What a good story!”

Each of the arts is defined by its essential form. From sym¬
phony to hip-hop, the underlying form of music makes a piece
music and not noise. Whether representational or abstract, the car¬
dinal principles of visual art make a canvas a painting, not a
doodle. Equally, from Homer to Ingmar Bergman, the universal
form of story shapes a work into story, not portraiture or collage.
Across all cultures and through all ages, this innate form has been
endlessly variable but changeless.

Yet form does not mean formula.’’ There is no screenplay-writing
recipe that guarantees your cake will rise. Story is far too rich in
mystery, complexity, and flexibility to be reduced to a formula.
Only a fool would try. Rather, a writer must grasp story form. This
is inescapable.

GOOD STORY WELL TOLD

“Good story” means something worth telling that the world wants
to hear. Finding this is your lonely task. It begins with talent. You

THE STORY PROBLEM + 21

must be born with the creative power to put things together in a
way no one has ever dreamed. Then you must bring to the work a
vision that's driven by fresh insights into human nature and
society, coupled with in-depth knowledge of your characters and
your world. All that . . . and, as Hallie and Whit Burnett reveal in
their excellent little book, a lot of love.

The love of story—the belief that your vision can be expressed
only through story, that characters can be more “real” than people,
that the fictional world is more profound than the concrete. The love
of the dramatic—a fascination with the sudden surprises and reve¬
lations that bring sea-changes in life. The love of truth—the belief
that lies cripple the artist, that every truth in life must be ques¬
tioned, down to one’s own secret motives. The love of humanity—a
willingness to empathize with suffering souls, to crawl inside their
skins and see the world through their eyes. The love of sensation—
the desire to indulge not only the physical but the inner senses. The
love of dreaming—the pleasure in taking leisurely rides on your
imagination just to see where it leads. The love of humor—a joy in
the saving grace that restores the balance of life. The love of lan¬
guage—the delight in sound and sense, syntax and semantics. The
love of duality—a feel for life’s hidden contradictions, a healthy sus¬
picion that things are not what they seem. The love of perfection—
the passion to write and rewrite in pursuit of the perfect moment.
The love of uniqueness—the thrill of audacity and a stone-faced
calm when it is met by ridicule. The love of beauty—an innate
sense that treasures good writing, hates bad writing, and knows the
difference. The love of self—a strength that doesn't need to be con¬
stantly reassured, that never doubts that you are indeed a writer.
You must love to write and bear the loneliness.

But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world
driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not
enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.

fust as a composer must excel in the principles of musical com¬
position, so you must master the corresponding principles of story
composition. This craft is neither mechanics nor gimmicks. It is
the concert of techniques by which we create a conspiracy of

22 4 ROBERT MCKEE

interest between ourselves and the audience. Craft is the sum total
of all means used to draw the audience into deep involvement, to
hold that involvement, and ultimately to reward it with a moving
and meaningful experience.

Without craft, the best a writer can do is snatch the first idea
off the top of his head, then sit helpless in front of his own work,
unable to answer the dreaded questions: Is it good? Or is it sewage?
If sewage, what do I do? The conscious mind, fixated on these ter¬
rible questions, blocks the subconscious. But when the conscious
mind is put to work on the objective task of executing the craft, the
spontaneous surfaces. Mastery of craft frees the subconscious.

What is the rhythm of a writer’s day? First, you enter your
imagined world. As characters speak and act, you write. What’s the
next thing you do? You step out of your fantasy and read what
you’ve written. And what do you do as you read? You analyze. “Is it
good? Does it work? Why not? Should I cut? Add? Reorder?” You
write, you read; create, critique; impulse, logic; right brain, left
brain; re-imagine, rewrite. And the quality of your rewriting, the
possibility of perfection, depends on a command of the craft that
guides you to correct imperfection. An artist is never at the mercy
of the whims of impulse; he willfully exercises his craft to create
harmonies of instinct and idea.

STORY AND LIFE

Over the years I’ve observed two typical and persistent kinds of
failed screenplay. The first is the “personal story” bad script:

In an office setting we meet a protagonist with a problem: She
deserves a promotion but she’s being passed over. Angry, she heads
for her parents’ home to discover that Dad’s gone senile and Mom
can’t cope. Home to her apartment and a fight with her slobbish,
conniving roommate. Now out on a date and smack into a failure to
communicate: Her insensitive lover takes her to an expensive French
restaurant, completely forgetting that she's on a diet. Back to the
office where, amazingly, she gets her promotion ... but new pres-

THE STORY PROBLEM 4 23

sures arise. Back at her parents' place, where just as she solves Dad’s
problem, Mom goes over the edge. Coming home she discovers that
her roommate has stolen her TV and vanished without paying the
rent. She breaks up with her lover, raids the refrigerator, and gains
jive pounds. But chin up, she turns her promotion into a triumph. A
nostalgic heart-to-heart over a dinner with her folks cures Mom’s
woes. Her new roommate not only turns out to be an anal-retentive
gem who pays the rent weeks ahead with cashier’s checks, but intro¬
duces her to Someone New. We're now on page ninety-jive. She
sticks to her diet and looks great for the last twenty five pages, which
are the literary equivalent of running in slow-mo through daisies as
the romance with Someone New blossoms. At last she confronts her
Crisis Decision: whether or not to commit? The screenplay ends on a
tearful Climax as she decides she needs her space.

Second is the “guaranteed commercial success” bad script:

Through a luggage mix-up at the airport, a software salesman
comes into possession of the-thing-that-will-end-civilization-as-
we-know-it-today. The-thing-that-will-end-civilization-as-we-know-
it-today is quite small. In fact, it’s concealed inside a ballpoint pen
unwittingly in the pocket of this hapless protagonist, who becomes
the target of a cast of three dozen characters, all of whom have
double or triple identities, all of whom have worked on both sides of
the Iron Curtain, all of whom have known one another since the
Cold War, all of whom are trying to kill the guy. This script is
stuffed with car chases, shoot-outs, hair-raising escapes, and explo¬
sions. When not blowing things up or shooting folks down, it halts
for dialogue-thick scenes as the hero tries to sort through these
duplicitous people and find out just whom he can trust. It ends with
a cacophony of violence and multimillion-dollar effects, during which
the hero manages to destroy the-thing-that-will-end-civilization-as-
we-know-it-today and thus save humanity.

The “personal story” is understructured, slice-of-life portraiture
that mistakes verisimilitude for truth. This writer believes that the

24 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

more precise his observation of day-to-day facts, the more accurate
his reportage of what actually happens, the more truth he tells. But
fact, no matter how minutely observed, is truth with a small “t ” Big
T Truth is located behind, beyond, inside, below the surface of
things, holding reality together or tearing it apart, and cannot be
directly observed. Because this writer sees only what is visible and
factual, he is blind to the truth of life.

The “guaranteed commercial success,” on the other hand, is an
overstructured, overcomplicated, overpopulated assault on the
physical senses that bears no relationship to life whatsoever. This
writer is mistaking kinesis for entertainment. He hopes that,
regardless of story, if he calls for enough high-speed action and
dazzling visuals, the audience will be excited. And given the Com¬
puter Generated Image phenomenon that drives so many summer
releases, he would not be altogether wrong.

Spectacles of this kind replace imagination with simulated
actuality. They use story as an excuse for heretofore unseen effects
that carry us into a tornado, the jaws of a dinosaur, or futuristic
holocausts. And make no mistake, these razzle-dazzle spectacles
can deliver a circus of excitement. But like amusement park rides,
their pleasures are short-lived. For the history of filmmaking has
shown again and again that as fast as new kinetic thrills rise to pop¬
ularity, they sink under a “been there, done that” apathy.

Every decade or so technical innovation spawns a swarm of ill-
told movies, for the sole purpose of exploiting spectacle. The inven¬
tion of film itself, a startling simulation of actuality, caused great
public excitement, followed by years of vapid stories. In time, how¬
ever, the silent film evolved into a magnificent art form, only to be
destroyed by the advent of sound, a yet more realistic simulation of
actuality. Films of the early 1930s took a step backward as audi¬
ences willingly suffered bland stories for the pleasure of hearing
actors talk. The talkie then grew in power and beauty, only to be
knocked off stride by the inventions of color, 3-D, wide-screen, and
now Computer Generated Images, or CGI.

CGI is neither a curse nor a panacea. It simply adds fresh hues
to the story pallet. Thanks to CGI, anything we can imagine can be

THE STORY PROBLEM + 25

done, and done with subtle satisfaction. When CGIs are motivated
by a strong story, such as FORREST GUMP or MEN IN BLACK,
the effect vanishes behind the story it’s telling, enriching the
moment without calling attention to itself. The “commercial”
writer, however, is often dazzled by the glare of spectacle and
cannot see that lasting entertainment is found only in the charged
human truths beneath the image.

The writers of portraiture and spectacle, indeed all writers,
must come to understand the relationship of story to life: Story is
metaphor for life.

A storyteller is a life poet, an artist who transforms day-to-day
living, inner life and outer life, dream and actuality into a poem
whose rhyme scheme is events rather than words—a two-hour
metaphor that says: Life is like thisl Therefore, a story must abstract
from life to discover its essences, but not become an abstraction
that loses all sense of life-as-lived. A story must be like life, but not
so verbatim that it has no depth or meaning beyond what’s obvious
to everyone on the street.

Writers of portraiture must realize that facts are neutral. The
weakest possible excuse to include anything in a story is: “But it actu¬
ally happened.” Everything happens; everything imaginable happens.
Indeed, the unimaginable happens. But story is not life in actuality.
Mere occurrence brings us nowhere near the truth. What happens is
fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.

Consider a set of facts known as “The Life of Joan of Arc.” For
centuries celebrated writers have brought this woman to the stage,
page, and screen, and each Joan is unique—Anouilh’s spiritual
Joan, Shaw's witty Joan, Brecht’s political Joan, Dreyer’s suffering
Joan, Hollywood’s romantic warrior. In Shakespeare’s hands she
became the lunatic Joan, a distinctly British point of view. Each
Joan is divinely inspired, raises an army, defeats the English, burns
at the stake. Joan’s facts are always the same, but whole genres
shift while the “truth” of her life waits for the writer to find its
meaning.

Likewise, writers of spectacle must realize that abstractions are
neutral. By abstractions I mean strategies of graphic design, visual

26 4 R OB ERT MCKEE

effects, color saturation, sound perspective, editing rhythm, and the
like. These have no meaning in and of themselves. The identical
editing pattern applied to six different scenes results in six distinc¬
tively different interpretations. The aesthetics of film are the means
to express the living content of story, but must never become an
end in themselves.

POWERS AND TALENTS

Although the authors of portraiture or spectacle are weak in story,
they may be blessed with one of two essential powers. Writers who
lean toward reportage often have the power of the senses, the
power to transport corporal sensations into the reader. They see
and hear with such acuity and sensitivity that the reader’s heart
jumps when struck by the lucid beauty of their images. Writers of
action extravaganzas, on the other hand, often have the imaginative
power to lift audiences beyond what is to what could be. They can
take presumed impossibilities and turn them into shocking certain¬
ties. They also make hearts jump. Both sensory perception and a
lively imagination are enviable gifts, but, like a good marriage, one
complements the other. Alone they are diminished.

At one end of reality is pure fact; at the other end, pure imagi¬
nation. Spanning these two poles is the infinitely varied spectrum
of fiction. Strong storytelling strikes a balance along this spectrum.
If your writing drifts to one extreme or the other, you must learn to
draw all aspects of your humanity into harmony. You must place
yourself along the creative spectrum: sensitive to sight, sound, and
feeling, yet balancing that with the power to imagine. Dig in a two-
handed way, using your insight and instinct to move us, to express
your vision of how and why human beings do the things they do.

Last, not only are sensory and imaginative powers prerequisite
to creativity, writing also demands two singular and essential tal¬
ents. These talents, however, have no necessary connection. A
mountain of one does not mean a grain of the other.

The first is literary talent—the creative conversion of ordinary
language into a higher, more expressive form, vividly describing

THE STORY PROBLEM « 27

the world and capturing its human voices. Literary talent is, how¬
ever, common. In every literate community in the world, hundreds,
if not thousands of people can, to one degree or another, begin
with the ordinary language of their culture and end with something
extraordinary. They write beautifully, a few magnificently, in the lit¬
erary sense.

The second is story talent—the creative conversion of life itself
to a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. It seeks
out the inscape of our days and reshapes it into a telling that
enriches life. Pure story talent is rare. What writer, on instinct
alone, creates brilliantly told stories year after year and never gives
a moment’s thought to how he does what he does or could do it
better? Instinctive genius may produce a work of quality once, but
perfection and prolificness do not flow from the spontaneous and
untutored.

Literary and story talent are not only distinctively different but
are unrelated, for stories do not need to be written to be told. Sto¬
ries can be expressed any way human beings can communicate.
Theatre, prose, film, opera, mime, poetry, dance are all magnificent
forms of the story ritual, each with its own delights. At different
times in history, however, one of these steps to the fore. In the six¬
teenth century it was the theatre; in the nineteenth century, the
novel; in the twentieth century, the cinema, the grand concert of all
the arts. The most powerful, eloquent moments on screen require
no verbal description to create them, no dialogue to act them. They
are image, pure and silent. The material of literary talent is words;
the material of story talent is life itself

CRAFT MAXIMIZES TALENT

Rare as story talent is, we often meet people who seem to have it by
nature, those street-corner raconteurs for whom storytelling is as
easy as a smile. When, for example, coworkers gather around the
coffee machine, the storytelling begins. It’s the currency of human
contact. And whenever a half-dozen souls gather for this mid¬
morning ritual, there will always be at least one who has the gift.

28 « ROBERT MCKEE

Let’s say that this morning our storyteller tells her friends the
story of “How I Put My Kids on the School Bus.” Like Coleridge’s
Ancient Mariner, she hooks everyone's attention. She draws them
into her spell, holding them slack-jawed over their coffee cups. She
spins her tale, building them up, easing them down, making them
laugh, maybe cry, holding all in high suspense until she pays it off
with a dynamite last scene: “And that’s how I got the little
nosepickers on the bus this morning.” Her coworkers lean back
satisfied, muttering, “God, yes, Helen, my kids are just like that.”

Now let’s say the storytelling passes to the guy next to her who
tells the others the heartrending tale of how his mother died over
the weekend . . . and bores the hell out of everyone. His story is all
on the surface, repetitious rambling from trivial detail to cliche:
“She looked so good in her coffin.” Halfway through his rendition,
the rest head back to the coffee pot for another cup, turning a deaf
ear to his tale of grief.

Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus
profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the
trivial told brilliantly. Master storytellers know how to squeeze life
out of the least of things, while poor storytellers reduce the pro¬
found to the banal. You may have the insight of a Buddha, but if
you cannot tell story, your ideas turn dry as chalk.

Story talent is primary, literary talent secondary but essential.
This principle is absolute in film and television, and truer for stage
and page than most playwrights and novelists wish to admit. Rare
as story talent is, you must have some or you wouldn’t be itching to
write. Your task is to wring from it all possible creativity. Only by
using everything and anything you know about the craft of story¬
telling can you make your talent forge story. For talent without
craft is like fuel without an engine. It burns wildly but accom¬
plishes nothing.

ELEMENTS
OF STORY

A beautifully told story is a symphonic unity in which structure,
setting, character, genre, and idea meld seamlessly. To find their
harmony, the writer must study the elements of story as if they
were instruments of an orchestra—first separately, then in concert.

2 ,

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM

THE TERMINOLOGY OF STORY DESIGN

When a character steps into your imagination, he brings an abun¬
dance of story possibilities. If you wish, you could start the telling
before the character is born, then follow him day after day, decade
after decade until dead and gone. A character’s life encompasses
hundreds of thousands of living hours, hours both complex and
multileveled.

From an instant to eternity, from the intracranial to the
intergalactic, the life story of each and every character
offers encyclopedic possibilities. The mark of a master
is to select only a few moments but give us a lifetime.

Starting at the deepest level, you might set the story within the
protagonist’s inner life and tell the whole tale inside his thoughts
and feelings, awake or dreaming. Or you could shift up to the level
of personal conflict between protagonist and family, friends, lovers.
Or expand into social institutions, setting the character at odds with
school, career, church, the justice system. Or wider still, you could
pit the character against the environment—dangerous city streets,
lethal diseases, the car that won’t start, time running out. Or any
combination of all these levels.

But this complex expanse of life story must become the story told. To
design a feature film, you must reduce the seething mass and rush of

3 1

32 4 ROBERT MCKEE

life story to just two little hours, more or less, that somehow express
everything you left out. And when a story is well told, isn’t that the
effect? When friends come back from a film and you ask them what it
was about, have you noticed they often put the story told inside life story ?

“Great! About a guy raised on a sharecropper’s farm. As a kid he
toiled with his family under the hot sun. He went to school but didn’t
do too well because he had to get up at dawn, all that weeding and
hoeing. But somebody gave him a guitar and he learned to play, write
his own songs . .. finally, fed up with this backbreaking life, he ran
away, living hand to mouth playing in honky-tonk bars. Then he met a
beautiful gal with a great voice. They fell in love, teamed up, and,
bang, their careers skyrocketed. But the trouble was the spotlight was
always on her. He wrote their songs, arranged, backed her up, but
people only came to see her. Living in her shadow, he turned to drink.
Finally she throws him out, and there he is back on the road again,
until he hits rock bottom. He wakes up in a cheap motel in a dusty
Midwest town, middle of nowhere, penniless, friendless, a hopeless
drunk, not a dime for the phone and no one to call if he had one.”

In other words, TENDER MERCIES told from birth. But
nothing of the above is in the film. TENDER MERCIES begins the
morning Robert Duvall’s Mac Sledge wakes up at rock bottom. The
next two hours cover the next year in Sledge’s life. Yet, in and
between scenes, we come to know all of his past, everything of sig¬
nificance that happens to Sledge in that year, until the last image
gives us a vision of his future. A man’s life, virtually from birth to
death, is captured between the FADE IN and FADE OUT of
Horton Foote’s Oscar-winning screenplay.

Structure

From the vast flux of life story the writer must make choices. Fictional
worlds are not daydreams but sweatshops where we labor in search of
material to tailor a film. Yet when asked “What do you choose?” no
two writers agree. Some look for character, others for action or strife,
perhaps mood, images, dialogue. But no one element, in and of itself,
will build a story. A film isn’t just moments of conflict or activity, per-

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM + 33

sonality or emotionality, witty talk or symbols. What the writer seeks
are events, for an event contains all the above and more.

STRUCTURE is a selection of events from the characters'
life stories that is composed into a strategic sequence to
arouse specific emotions and to express a specific view
of life.

An event is caused by or affects people, thus delineating charac¬
ters; it takes place in a setting, generating image, action, and dia¬
logue; it draws energy from conflict producing emotion in
characters and audience alike. But event choices cannot be dis¬
played randomly or indifferently; they must be composed, and "to
compose" in story means much the same thing it does in music.
What to include? To exclude? To put before and after what?

To answer these questions you must know your purpose.
Events composed to do what? One purpose may be to express your
feelings, but this becomes self-indulgence if it doesn't result in
arousing emotions in the audience. A second purpose may be to
express ideas, but this risks solipsism if the audience cannot
follow. So the design of events needs a dual strategy.

Event

“Event” means change. If the streets outside your window are dry,
but after a nap you see they’re wet, you assume an event has taken
place, called rain. The world's changed from dry to wet. You
cannot, however, build a film out of nothing but changes in
weather—although there are those who have tried. Story Events are
meaningful, not trivial. To make change meaningful it must, to
begin with, happen to a character. If you see someone drenched in
a downpour, this has somewhat more meaning than a damp street.

A STORY EVENT creates meaningful change in the life sit¬
uation of a character that is expressed and experienced
in terms of a VALUE.

34 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

To make change meaningful you must express it, and the audi¬
ence must react to it, in terms of a value. By values I don't mean
virtues or the narrow, moralizing “family values” use of the word.
Rather, Story Values refers to the broadest sense of the idea. Values
are the soul of storytelling. Ultimately ours is the art of expressing
to the world a perception of values.

STORY VALUES are the universal qualities of human
experience that may shift from positive to negative, or
negative to positive, from one moment to the next.

For example: alive/dead (positive/negative) is a story value, as
are love/hate, freedom/slavery, truth/lie, courage/cowardice, loy¬
alty/betrayal, wisdom/stupidity, strength/weakness, excitement/
boredom and so on. All such binary qualities of experience that can
reverse their charge at any moment are Story Values. They may be
moral, good/evil; ethical, right/wrong; or simply charged with
value. Hope/despair is neither moral nor ethical, but we certainly
know when we are at one end of the experience or the other.

Imagine that outside your window is 1980s Hast Africa, a realm
of drought. Now we have a value at stake: survival, life/death. We
begin at the negative: This terrible famine is taking lives by the
thousands. If then it should rain, a monsoon that brings the earth
back to green, animals to pasture, and people to survival, this rain
would be deeply meaningful because it switches the value from
negative to positive, from death to life.

However, as powerful as this event would be, it still does not
qualify as a Story Event because it happened by coincidence. Rain
finally fell in East Africa. Although there’s a place for coincidence
in storytelling, a story cannot be built out of nothing but accidental
events, no matter how charged with value.

A Story Event creates meaningful change in the life
situation of a character that is expressed and experi¬
enced in terms of a value and ACHIEVED THROUGH
CONFLICT.

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM « 35

Again, a world of drought. Into it comes a man who imagines
himself a “rainmaker.” This character has deep inner conflict
between his passionate belief that he can bring rain, although he
has never been able to do it, and his terrible fear that he’s a fool or
mad. He meets a woman, falls in love, then suffers as she tries to
believe in him, but turns away, convinced he’s a charlatan or worse.
He has a strong conflict with society—some follow him as if he’s a
messiah; others want to stone him out of town. Lastly, he faces
implacable conflict with the physical world—the hot winds, empty
skies, parched earth. If this man can struggle through all his inner
and personal conflicts, against social and environmental forces and
finally coax rain out of a cloudless sky, that storm would be
majestic and sublimely meaningful—for it is change motivated
through conflict. What I have described is THE RAINMAKER,
adapted to the screen by Richard Nash from his own play.

Scene

For a typical film, the writer will choose forty to sixty Story Events
or, as they're commonly known, scenes. A novelist may want more
than sixty, a playwright rarely as many as forty.

A SCENE is an action through conflict in more or less
continuous time and space that turns the value-charged
condition of a character's life on at least one value with
a degree of perceptible significance. Ideally, every scene
is a STORY EVENT.

Look closely at each scene you’ve written and ask: What value is
at stake in my character’s life at this moment? Love? Truth? What?
How is that value charged at the top of the scene? Positive? Nega¬
tive? Some of both? Make a note. Next turn to the close of the scene
and ask, Where is this value now? Positive? Negative? Both? Make
a note and compare. If the answer you write down at the end of the
scene is the same note you made at the opening, you now have
another important question to ask: Why is this scene in my script?

36 4 ROBERT MCKEE

If the value-charged condition of the character’s life stays
unchanged from one end of a scene to the other, nothing mean¬
ingful happens. The scene has activity—talking about this, doing
that—but nothing changes in value. It is a nonevent.

Why then is the scene in the story? The answer is almost cer¬
tain to be “exposition.” It’s there to convey information about char¬
acters, world, or history to the eavesdropping audience. If
exposition is a scene’s sole justification, a disciplined writer will
trash it and weave its information into the film elsewhere.

No scene that doesn't turn. This is our ideal. We work to round
every scene from beginning to end by turning a value at stake in a
character’s life from the positive to the negative or the negative to
the positive. Adherence to this principle may be difficult, but it’s by
no means impossible.

DIE HARD, THE FUGITIVE, and STRAW DOGS clearly meet
this test, but the ideal is also kept in subtler, though no less rig¬
orous ways, in REMAINS OF THE DAY and THE ACCIDENTAL
TOURIST. The difference is that Action genres turn on public
values such as freedom/slavery or justice/injustice; the Education
genre turns on interior values such as self-awareness/self-deception
or life as meaningful/meaningless. Regardless of genre, the prin¬
ciple is universal: If a scene is not a true event, cut it.

For example:

Chris and Andy are in love and live together. They wake up one
morning and start to squabble. Their spat builds in the kitchen as
they hurry to make breakfast. In the garage, the fight becomes nas¬
tier as they climb into their car to drive to work together. Finally
words explode into violence on the highway. Andy wrenches the car
to the shoulder and jumps out, ending their relationship. This series
of actions and locations creates a scene: It takes the couple from the
positive (in love and together) to the negative (in hate and apart).

The four shifts of place—bedroom to kitchen to garage to
highway—are camera setups but not true scenes. Although they
intensify behavior and make the critical moment credible, they do

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM * 37

not change the values at stake. As the argument moves through the
morning, the couple is still together and presumably in love. But
when the action reaches its Turning Point—a slamming car door
and Andy's declaration, “It’s over!”—life turns upside down for the
lovers, activity changes to action, and the sketch becomes a com¬
plete scene, a Story Event.

Generally the test of whether a series of activities constitutes a true
scene is this: Could it have been written “in one,” in a unity of time
and place? In this case the answer is yes. Their argument could begin
in a bedroom, build in the bedroom, and end the relationship in the
bedroom. Countless relationships have ended in bedrooms. Or the
kitchen. Or the garage. Or not on the highway but in the office ele¬
vator. A playwright might write the scene “in one” because the staging
limitations of the theatre often force us to keep the unities of time and
place; the novelist or screenwriter, on the other hand, might travel the
scene, parsing it out in time and space to establish future locations,
Chris’s taste in furniture, Andy’s driving habits—for any number of
reasons. This scene could even cross-cut with another scene, perhaps
involving another couple. The variations are endless, but in all cases
this is a single Story Event, the “lovers break up” scene.

Beat

Inside the scene is the smallest element of structure, the Beat. (Not
to be confused with [beat], an indication within a column of dia¬
logue meaning “short pause”.)

A BEAT is an exchange of behavior in action/reaction.

Beat by Beat these changing behaviors shape the turning

of a scene.

Taking a closer look at the “lovers break up” scene: As the
alarm goes off, Chris teases Andy and he reacts in kind. As they
dress, teasing turns to sarcasm and they throw insults back and
forth. Now in the kitchen Chris threatens Andy with: “If I left you,
baby, you’d be so miserable . . but he calls her bluff with “That’s

38 4 ROBERT MCKEE

a misery I'd love.” In the garage Chris, afraid she’s losing him,
begs Andy to stay, but he laughs and ridicules her plea. Finally, in
the speeding car, Chris doubles her fist and punches Andy. A fight,
a squeal of brakes. Andy jumps out with a bloody nose, slams the
door and shouts, “It’s over,” leaving her in shock.

This scene is built around six beats, six distinctively different
behaviors, six clear changes of action/reaction: teasing each other, fol¬
lowed by a give-and-take of insults, then threatening and daring each
other, next pleading and ridiculing, and finally exchanges of violence
that lead to the last Beat and Turning Point: Andy’s decision and
action that ends the relationship, and Chris’s dumbfounded surprise.

Sequence

Beats build scenes. Scenes then build the next largest movement of
story design, the Sequence. Every true scene turns the value-charged
condition of the character’s life, but from event to event the degree
of change can differ greatly. Scenes cause relatively minor yet signif¬
icant change. The capping scene of a sequence, however, delivers a
more powerful, determinant change.

A SEQUENCE is a series of scenes—generally two to
five—that culminates with greater impact than any pre¬
vious scene.

For example, this three-scene sequence:

Setup: A young business woman who’s had a notable
career in the Midwest has been approached by headhunters
and interviewed for a position with a New York corpora¬
tion. If she wins this post, it’ll be a huge step up in her
career. She wants the job very much but hasn’t won it yet
(negative). She is one of six finalists. The corporate heads
realize that this position has a vital public dimension to it,
so they want to see these applicants on their feet in an
informal setting before making the final decision. They
invite all six to a party on Manhattan’s East Side.

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM * 39

Scene One: A West Side Hotel where our protagonist
prepares for the evening. The value at stake is self-confi¬
dence/self-doubt. She’ll need all her confidence to pull off
this evening successfully, but she’s filled with doubts (neg¬
ative). Fear knots her middle as she paces the room, telling
herself she was a fool to come East, these New Yorkers will
eat her alive. She flings clothes out of her suitcase, trying
on this, trying on that, but each outfit looks worse than the
one before. Her hair is an uncombable tangle of frizz. As
she grapples with her clothes and hair, she decides to pack
it in and save herself the humiliation.

Suddenly, the phone rings. It’s her mother, calling to
lace a good-luck toast with guilt trips about loneliness and
her fear of abandonment. Barbara hangs up, realizing that
the piranhas of Manhattan are no match for the great white
shark at home. She needs this job! She then amazes herself
with a combination of clothes and accessories she’s never
tried before. Her hair falls magically into place. She plants
herself in front of the mirror, looking great, eyes bright,
glowing with confidence (positive).

Scene Two: Under the hotel marquee. Thunder, light¬
ning, pelting rain. Because Barbara’s from Terre Haute,
she didn’t know to tip the doorman five bucks when she
registered, so he won’t go out into the storm to find a cab
for a stiff. Besides, when it rains in New York there are no
cabs. So she studies her visitors’ map, pondering what to
do. She realizes if she tries to run from the West Eighties
over to Central Park West, then all the way down CPW to
Fifty-ninth Street, across Central Park South to Park
Avenue, and up into the East Eighties, she’ll never get to
the party on time. So she decides to do what they warn
never, ever to do—to run through Central Park at night.
This scene takes on a new value: life/death.

She covers her hair with a newspaper and darts into the
night, daring death (negative). A lightning flash and, bang,
she’s surrounded by that gang that is always out there, rain

40 + ROBERT MCKEE

or shine, waiting for the fools who run through the park at
night. But she didn’t take karate classes for nothing. She
kick-fights her way through the gang, breaking jaws, scat¬
tering teeth on the concrete, until she stumbles out of the
park, alive (positive).

Scene Three: Mirrored lobby—Park Avenue apartment
building. The value at stake now switches to social suc¬
cess/social failure. She’s survived. But then she looks in the
mirror and sees a drowned rat: newspaper shredded in her
hair; blood all over her clothes—the gang’s blood—but
blood nonetheless. Her self-confidence plummets past
doubt and fear until she bows in personal defeat (negative),
crushed by her social disaster (negative).

Taxis pull up with the other applicants. All found cabs;
all get out looking New York chic. They take pity on the
poor loser from the Midwest and usher her into an elevator.

In the penthouse they towel off her hair and find mis¬
matched clothes for her to wear, and because she looks like
this, the spotlight’s on her all night. Because she knows she
has lost anyway, she relaxes into her natural self and from
deep within comes a chutzpah she never knew she had; she
not only tells them about her batde in the park but makes
jokes about it. Mouths go slack with awe or wide with
laughter. At end of the evening, all the executives know exactly
who they want for the job: Anyone who can go through that
terror in the park and display this kind of cool is clearly the
person for them. The evening ends on her personal and social
triumphs as she is given the job (doubly positive).

Each scene turns on its own value or values. Scene One: self¬
doubt to self-confidence. Scene Two: death to life; self-confidence
to defeat. Scene Three: social disaster to social triumph. But the
three scenes become a sequence of another, greater value that over¬
rides and subordinates the others, and that is THE JOB. At the
beginning of the sequence she has NO JOB. The third scene
becomes a Sequence Climax because here social success wins her

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM + 41

THE JOB. From her point of view THE JOB is a value of such mag¬
nitude she risked her life for it.

It’s useful to title each sequence to make clear to yourself why it's
in the film. The story purpose of this “getting the job” sequence is to
take her from NO JOB to JOB. It could have been accomplished in a
single scene with a personnel officer. But to say more than “she's
qualified,” we might create a full sequence that not only gets her the
job but dramatizes her inner character and relationship to her
mother, along with insights into New York City and the corporation.

Act

Scenes turn in minor but significant ways; a series of scenes builds a
sequence that turns in a moderate, more impactful way; a series of
sequences builds the next largest structure, the Act, a movement that
turns on a major reversal in the value-charged condition of the char¬
acter’s life. The difference between a basic scene, a scene that climaxes
a sequence, and a scene that climaxes an act is the degree of change,
or, more precisely, the degree of impact that change has, for better or
worse, on the character—on the character’s inner life, personal rela¬
tionships, fortunes in the world, or some combination of all these.

An ACT is a series of sequences that peaks in a climactic
scene which causes a major reversal of values, more
powerful in its impact than any previous sequence or
scene.

Story

A series of acts builds the largest structure of all: the Story. A story is
simply one huge master event. When you look at the value-charged
situation in the life of the character at the beginning of the story, then
compare it to the value-charge at the end of the story, you should see
the arc of the film, the great sweep of change that takes life from one
condition at the opening to a changed condition at the end. This final
condition, this end change, must be absolute and irreversible.

42 4 ROBERT MCKEE

Change caused by a scene could be reversed: The lovers in the
previous sketch could get back together; people fall in and out and
back in love again every day. A sequence could be reversed: The
Midwest businesswoman could win her job only to discover that
she reports to a boss she hates and wishes she were back in Terre
Haute. An act climax could be reversed: A character could die, as in
the Act Two climax of E.T., and then come back to life. Why not? In
a modern hospital, reviving the dead is commonplace. So, scene by
sequence by act, the writer creates minor, moderate, and major
change, but conceivably, each of those changes could be reversed.
This is not, however, the case in the climax of the last act.

STORY CLIMAX: A story is a series of acts that build to
a last act climax or story climax which brings about
absolute and irreversible change.

If you make the smallest element do its job, the deep purpose
of the telling will be served. Let every phrase of dialogue or line of
description either turn behavior and action or set up the conditions
for change. Make your beats build scenes, scenes build sequences,
sequences build acts, acts build story to its climax.

The scenes that turn the life of the Terre Haute protagonist from
self-doubt to self-confidence, from danger to survival, from social dis¬
aster to success combine into a sequence that takes her from NO JOB
to JOB. To arc the telling to a Story Climax, perhaps this opening
sequence sets up a series of sequences that takes her from NO JOB to
PRESIDENT OF THE CORPORATION at the Act One climax. This
Act One climax sets up an Act Two in which internecine corporate
wars lead to her betrayal by friends and associates. At the Act Two
climax she’s fired by the board of directors and out on the street. This
major reversal sends her to a rival corporation where, armed with
business secrets gleaned while she was president, she quickly reaches
the top again so she can enjoy destroying her previous employers. These
acts arc her from the hardworking, optimistic, and honest young profes¬
sional who opens the film to the ruthless, cynical, and corrupt veteran of
corporate wars who ends the film—absolute, irreversible change.

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM + 43

THE STORY TRIANGLE

In some literary circles “plot” has become a dirty word, tarred
with a connotation of hack commercialism. The loss is ours, for
plot is an accurate term that names the internally consistent, inter¬
related pattern of events that move through time to shape and
design a story. While no fine film was ever written without flashes
of fortuitous inspiration, a screenplay is not an accident. Material
that pops up willy-nilly cannot remain willy-nilly. The writer
redrafts inspiration again and again, making it look as if an instinc¬
tive spontaneity created the film, yet knowing how much effort and
unnaturalness went into making it look natural and effortless.

To PLOT means to navigate through the dangerous ter¬
rain of story and when confronted by a dozen branching
possibilities to choose the correct path. Plot is the
writer's choice of events and their design in time.

Again, what to include? Exclude? Put before and after what?
Event choices must be made; the writer chooses either well or ill;
the result is plot.

When TENDER MERCIES premiered, some reviewers described
it as “plotless,” then praised it for that. TENDER MERCIES not only
has a plot, it is exquisitely plotted through some of the most difficult
film terrain of all: a story in which the arc of the film takes place
within the mind of the protagonist. Here the protagonist experiences
a deep and irreversible revolution in his attitude toward life and/or
toward himself.

For the novelist such stories are natural and facile. In either
third-person or first-person, the novelist can directly invade
thought and feeling to dramatize the tale entirely on the landscape
of the protagonist’s inner life. For the screenwriter such stories are
by far the most fragile and difficult. We cannot drive a camera lens
through an actor’s forehead and photograph his thoughts, although
there are those who would try. Somehow we must lead the audi¬
ence to interpret the inner life from outer behavior without loading

44 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

the soundtrack with expositional narration or stuffing the mouths
of characters with self-explanatory dialogue. As John Carpenter
said, “Movies are about making mental things physical.”

To begin the great sweep of change within his protagonist,
Horton Foote opens TENDER MERCIES with Sledge drowning in
the meaninglessness of his life. He is committing slow suicide
with alcohol because he no longer believes in anything—neither
family, nor work, nor this world, nor the hereafter. As Foote pro¬
gresses the film, he avoids the cliche of finding meaning in one
overwhelming experience of great romance, brilliant success, or
religious inspiration. Instead he shows us a man weaving together
a simple yet meaningful life from the many delicate threads of love,
music, and spirit. At last Sledge undergoes a quiet transformation
and finds a life worth living.

We can only imagine the sweat and pains Horton Foote
invested in plotting this precarious film. A single misstep—one
missing scene, one superfluous scene, a slight misordering of inci¬
dent—and like a castle of cards, the riveting inner journey of Mac
Sledge collapses into portraiture. Plot, therefore, doesn't mean
ham-handed twists and turns, or high-pressure suspense and
shocking surprise. Rather, events must be selected and their pat¬
terning displayed through time. In this sense of composition or
design, all stories are plotted.

Archplot, Miniplot, Antiplot

Although the variations of event design are innumerable, they are
not without limits. The far corners of the art create a triangle of
formal possibilities that maps the universe of stories. Within this
triangle is the totality of writers’ cosmologies, all their multitudi¬
nous visions of reality and how life is lived within it. To understand
your place in this universe, study the coordinates of this map, com¬
pare them to your work-in-progress, and let them guide you to that
point you share with other writers of a similar vision.

At the top of the story triangle are the principles that constitute
Classical Design. These principles are “classical” in the truest sense:

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM + 45

timeless and transcultural, fundamental to every earthly society,
civilized and primitive, reaching back through millennia of oral
storytelling into the shadows of time. When the epic Gilgamesh was
carved in cuneiform on twelve clay tablets 4,000 years ago, con¬
verting story to the written word for the first time, the principles of
Classical Design were already fully and beautifully in place.

CLASSICAL DESIGN means a story built around an active
protagonist who struggles against primarily external
forces of antagonism to pursue his or her desire, through
continuous time, within a consistent and causally con¬
nected fictional reality, to a closed ending of absolute,
irreversible change.

This collection of timeless principles I call the Archplot: Arch
(pronounced “ark” as in archangel) in the dictionary sense of “emi¬
nent above others of the same kind.”

CLASSICAL DESIGN
Archplot

MINIMALISM

Miniplot

ANTI-STRUCTURE

Antiplot

46 4 ROBERT MCKEE

The Archplot, however, is not the limit of storytelling shapes. In
the left comer, I place all examples of minimalism. As the word sug¬
gests, minimalism means that the writer begins with the elements of
Classical Design but then reduces them—shrinking or compressing,
trimming or truncating the prominent features of the Archplot. I call
this set of minimalist variations Miniplot. Miniplot does not mean no
plot, for its story must be as beautifully executed as an Archplot.
Rather, minimalism strives for simplicity and economy while
retaining enough of the classical that the film will still satisfy the audi¬
ence, sending them out of the cinema thinking, “What a good story!”

In the right corner is Antiplot, the cinema counterpart to the
antinovel or Nouveau Roman and Theatre of the Absurd. This set
of antistructure variations doesn’t reduce the Classical but reverses
it, contradicting traditional forms to exploit, perhaps ridicule the
very idea of formal principles. The Antiplot-maker is rarely inter¬
ested in understatement or quiet austerity; rather, to make clear his
“revolutionary” ambitions, his films tend toward extravagance and
self-conscious overstatement.

The Archplot is the meat, potatoes, pasta, rice, and couscous of
world cinema. For the past one hundred years it has informed the vast
majority of films that have found an international audience. If we
skim through the decades—THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY
(USA/1904), THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII (Italy/1913), THE CAB¬
INET OF DR. CALIGARI (Germany/1920), GREED (USA/1924),
THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (USSR/1925), M (Germany/1931),
TOP HAT (USA/1935), LA GRANDE ILLUSION (France/1937),
BRINGING UP BABY (USA/1938), CITIZEN KANE (USA/1941),
BRIEF ENCOUNTER (UK/1945), THE SEVEN SAMURAI
(Japan/1954), MARTY (USA/1955), THE SEVENTH SEAL
(Sweden/1957), THE HUSTLER (USA/1961), 2001: A SPACE
ODYSSEY (USA/1968), THE GODFATHER, PART II (USA/1974),
DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS (Brazil/1978), A FISH
CALLED WANDA (UK/1988), BIG (USA/1988), JU DOU
(China/1990), THELMA & LOUISE (USA/1991), FOUR WED¬
DINGS AND A FUNERAL (UK/1994), SHINE (Australia/1996)—we
glimpse the staggering variety of story embraced within the Archplot.

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM f 47

Miniplot, though less various, is equally international: NANOOK
OF THE NORTH (USA/1922), LA PASSION DE JEANNE D’ARC
(France/1928), ZERO DE CONDUITE (France/1933), PAISAN
(Italy/1946), WILD STRAWBERRIES (Sweden/1957), THE MUSIC
ROOM (India/1964), THE RED DESERT (Italy/1964), FIVE EASY
PIECES (USA/1970), CLAIRE’S KNEE (France/1970), IN THE
REALM OF THE SENSES (Japan/1976), TENDER MERCIES
(USA/1983), PARIS, TEXAS (West Germany/France/1984), THE
SACRIFICE (Sweden/France/1986), PELLE THE CONQUEROR
(Denmark/1987), STOLEN CHILDREN (Italy/1992), A RIVER
RUNS THROUGH IT (USA/1993), TO LIVE (China/1994), and
SHALL WE DANCE (Japan/1997). Miniplot also embraces narrative
documentaries such as WELFARE (USA/1975).

Examples of Antiplot are less common, predominantly Euro¬
pean, and post-World War II: UN CHIEN ANDALOU (France/1928),
BLOOD OF THE POET (France/1932), MESHES OF THE AFTER¬
NOON (USA/1943), THE RUNNING, JUMPING AND STANDING
STILL FILM (UK/1959), LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (France/
i960), 872 (Italy/1963), PERSONA (Sweden/1966), WEEKEND
(France/1967), DEATH BY HANGING (Japan/1968), CLOWNS
(Italy/1970), MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (UK/1975),
THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (France/Spain/1977), BAD
TIMING (UK/1980), STRANGER THAN PARADISE (USA/1984),
AFTER HOURS (USA/1985), A ZED & TWO NOUGHTS (UK/
Netherlands/1985), WAYNE’S WORLD (USA/1993), CHUNGKING
EXPRESS (Hong Kong/1994), LOST HIGHWAY (USA/1997). Anti¬
plot also includes the documentary-cum-collage such as Alain Resnais’s
NIGHT AND FOG (France/1955) and KOYAANISQATSI (USA/1983).

FORMAL DIFFERENCES WITHIN THE STORY
TRIANGLE

Closed Versus Open Endings

The Archplot delivers a closed ending—all questions raised by the
story are answered; all emotions evoked are satisfied. The audience

48 + ROBERT MCKEE

leaves with a rounded, closed experience—nothing in doubt, nothing
unsated.

Miniplot, on the other hand, often leaves the ending somewhat
open. Most of the questions raised by the telling are answered, but
an unanswered question or two may trail out of the film, leaving
the audience to supply it subsequent to the viewing. Most of the
emotion evoked by the film will be satisfied, but an emotional
residue may be left for the audience to satisfy. Although Miniplot
may end on a question mark of thought and feeling, “open” doesn't
mean the film quits in the middle, leaving everything hanging. The
question must be answerable, the emotion resolvable. All that has
gone before leads to clear and limited alternatives that make a
degree of closure possible.

A Story Climax of absolute, irreversible change that
answers all questions raised by the telling and satisfies
all audience emotion is a CLOSED ENDING.

A Story Climax that leaves a question or two unanswered
and some emotion unfulfilled is an OPEN ENDING.

At the climax of PARIS, TEXAS father and son are reconciled;
their future is set and our hope for their happiness satisfied. But
the husband/wife, mother/son relationships are left unresolved.
The questions “Will this family have a future together? If so, what
kind of future will it be?” are open. The answers will be found in
the privacy of postfilm thoughts: If you want this family to get
together, but your heart tells you they aren’t going to make it, it’s a
sad evening. If you can convince yourself that they will live happily
ever after, you walk out pleased. The minimalist storyteller deliber¬
ately gives this last critical bit of work to the audience.

External Versus Internal Conflict

The Archplot puts emphasis on external conflict. Although charac¬
ters often have strong inner conflicts, the emphasis falls on their

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM + 49

struggles with personal relationships, with social institutions, or
with forces in the physical world. In Miniplot, to the contrary, the
protagonist may have strong external conflicts with family, society,
and environment, but emphasis will fall on the battles within his
own thoughts and feelings, conscious or unconscious.

Compare the journeys of the protagonists in THE ROAD WAR¬
RIOR and THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST. In the former, Mel
Gibson’s Mad Max undergoes an inner transformation from self-
sufficient loner to self-sacrificing hero, but the emphasis of the
story falls on the survival of the clan. In the latter, the life of
William Hurt’s travel writer changes as he remarries and becomes
the much-needed father to a lonely boy, but the emphasis of the
film falls on the resurrection of this man’s spirit. His transforma¬
tion from a man suffering a paralysis of emotions to a man free to
love and feel is the film’s dominant arc of change.

Single Versus Multiple Protagonists

The classically told story usually places a single protagonist—man,
woman, or child—at the heart of the telling. One major story dom¬
inates screentime and its protagonist is the star role. However, if
the writer splinters the film into a number of relatively small, sub¬
plot-sized stories, each with a separate protagonist, the result mini-
malizes the roller-coaster dynamic of the Archplot and creates the
Multiplot variation of Miniplot that’s grown in popularity since the
1980s.

In THE FUGITIVE’S highly charged Archplot the camera never
loses sight of Harrison Ford's protagonist: no glances sideways, not
even a hint of a subplot. PARENTHOOD, on the other hand, is a
tempered weave of no fewer than six tales of six protagonists. As in
an Archplot, the conflicts of these six characters are predominantly
external; none of them undergoes the deep suffering and inner
change of THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST. But because these family
battles draw our feelings in so many directions and because each
story receives a brief fifteen or twenty minutes of screentime, their
multiple design softens the telling.

50 4 ROBERT MCKEE

The Multiplot dates from INTOLERANCE (USA/1916),
GRAND HOTEL (USA/1932), THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
(Sweden/1961), and SHIP OF FOOLS (USA/1965) to its common
use today—SHORT CUTS, PULP FICTION, DO THE RIGHT
THING, and EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN.

Active Versus Passive Protagonist

The single protagonist of an Archplot tends to be active and
dynamic, willfully pursuing desire through ever-escalating conflict
and change. The protagonist of a Miniplot design, although not
inert, is relatively reactive and passive. Generally this passivity is
compensated for either by giving the protagonist a powerful inner
struggle as in THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST or by surrounding
him with dramatic events as in the Multiplot design of PELLE THE
CONQUEROR.

An ACTIVE PROTAGONIST, in the pursuit of desire,
takes action in direct conflict with the people and the
world around him.

A PASSIVE PROTAGONIST is outwardly inactive while pur¬
suing desire inwardly, in conflict with aspects of his or her
own nature.

The title character of PELLE THE CONQUEROR is an adoles¬
cent under the control of the adult world and therefore has little
choice but to be reactive. Writer Bille August, however, takes
advantage of Pelle’s alienation to make him the passive observer of
tragic stories around him: Illicit lovers commit infanticide, a
woman castrates her husband for adultery, the leader of a workers’
revolt is bludgeoned into a cretin. Because August controls the
telling from the child’s point of view, these violent events are kept
offscreen or at a distance, so that we rarely see the cause, only the
aftermath. The design softens or minimalizes what could have
been melodramatic, even distasteful.

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM * 51

Linear Versus Nonlinear Time

An Archplot begins at a certain point in time, moves elliptically
through more or less continuous time, and ends at a later date. If
flashbacks are used, they are handled so that the audience can
place the story’s events in their temporal order. An antiplot, on the
other hand, is often disjunctive, scrambling or fragmenting time to
make it difficult, if not impossible, to sort what happened into any
linear sequence. Godard once remarked that in his aesthetic a film
must have a beginning, middle, and end ... but not necessarily in
that order.

A story with or without flashbacks and arranged into a
temporal order of events that the audience can follow
is told in LINEAR TIME.

A story that either skips helter-skelter through time or
so blurs temporal continuity that the audience cannot
sort out what happens before and after what is told in
NONLINEAR TIME.

In the aptly titled Antiplot BAD TIMING a psychoanalyst (Art
Garfunkel) meets a woman (Theresa Russell) while vacationing in
Austria. The first third of the film contains scenes that seem to
come from the early going of the affair, but between them flash-for¬
wards leap to scenes from the relationship’s middle and late stages.
The center third of the film is spattered with scenes that we
assume are from their middle period, but interspersed with flash¬
backs to the beginning and flash-forwards to the end. The last third
is dominated by scenes that seem to come from the couple’s final
days but are spliced with flashbacks to middle and beginning. The
film ends on an act of necrophilia.

BAD TIMING is a contemporary reworking of the ancient idea of
“character as destiny”—the notion that your fate equals who you are,
that the final consequences of your life will be determined by the
unique nature of your character and nothing else—not family,

52 4 ROBERT MCKEE

society, environment, or chance. By tossing time like a salad, BAD
TIMING’S antistructure design disconnects the characters from the
world around them. What difference does it make whether they went
to Salzburg one weekend or Vienna the next; whether they had lunch
here or dinner there; quarreled over this or that or didn’t? What mat¬
ters is the poisonous alchemy of their personalities. The moment this
couple met they stepped on a bullet train to their grotesque fate.

Causality Versus Coincidence

The Archplot stresses how things happen in the world, how a cause
creates an effect, how this effect becomes a cause that triggers yet
another effect. Classical story design charts the vast interconnected¬
ness of life from the obvious to the impenetrable, from the inti¬
mate to the epic, from individual identity to the international
infosphere. It lays bare the network of chain-linked causalities that,
when understood, gives life meaning. The Antiplot, on the other
hand, often substitutes coincidence for causality, putting emphasis
on the random collisions of things in the universe that break the
chains of causality and lead to fragmentation, meaninglessness,
and absurdity.

CAUSALITY drives a story in which motivated actions
cause effects that in turn become the causes of yet
other effects, thereby interlinking the various levels of
conflict in a chain reaction of episodes to the Story
Climax, expressing the interconnectedness of reality.

COINCIDENCE drives a fictional world in which unmoti¬
vated actions trigger events that do not cause further
effects, and therefore fragment the story into divergent
episodes and an open ending, expressing the discon¬
nectedness of existence.

In AFTER HOURS a young man (Griffin Dunne) makes a date
with a woman he meets by chance in a Manhattan coffee shop. On

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM 4 53

the trip to her Soho apartment his last twenty bucks is blown out
the taxi window. He then seems to find his money stapled to a
bizarre statue-in-progress in her loft. His date suddenly commits a
well-planned suicide. Trapped in Soho without money for the
subway, he’s mistaken for a burglar and hunted by a vigilante mob.
Lunatic characters and an overflowing toilet block his escape, until
he’s hidden inside a statue, stolen by real burglars, and finally falls
out of their getaway truck, smack onto the steps of the building
where he works, right on time for his day at the word processor.
He’s a pool ball on the table of God, randomly bouncing around
until he drops into a pocket.

Consistent Versus Inconsistent Realities

Story is a metaphor for life. It takes us beyond the factual to the
essential. Therefore, it’s a mistake to apply a one-for-one standard
from reality to story. The worlds we create obey their own internal
rules of causality. An Archplot unfolds within a consistent reality
. . . but reality, in this case, doesn’t mean actuality. Even the most
naturalistic, “life as lived’’ Miniplot is an abstracted and rarefied
existence. Each fictional reality uniquely establishes how things
happen within it. In an Archplot these rules cannot be broken—
even if they are bizarre.

CONSISTENT REALITIES are fictional settings that estab¬
lish modes of interaction between characters and their
world that are kept consistently throughout the telling
to create meaning.

Virtually all works in the Fantasy genre, for example, are Arch¬
plots in which whimsical rules of “reality” are strictly obeyed. Sup¬
pose that in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT a human character
were to chase Roger, a cartoon character, toward a locked door.
Suddenly Roger flattens into two dimensions, slides under the sill,
and escapes. The human slams into the door. Fine. But now this
becomes a story rule: No human can catch Roger because he can

54 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

switch to two dimensions and escape. Should the writer want
Roger caught in a future scene, he would have to devise a non¬
human agent or go back to rewrite the previous chase. Having cre¬
ated story rules of causality, the writer of an Archplot must work
within his self-created discipline. Consistent Reality, therefore,
means an internally consistent world, true to itself.

INCONSISTENT REALITIES are settings that mix modes
of interaction so that the story's episodes jump incon¬
sistently from one "reality" to another to create a
sense of absurdity.

In an Antiplot, however, the only rule is to break rules: In Jean-
Luc Godard’s WEEKEND a Parisian couple decides to murder an
elderly aunt for her insurance money. On the way to the aunt’s
country home an accident, more hallucinatory than real, destroys
their red sports car. Later, as the couple trudges on foot down a
lovely shaded lane, Emily Bronte suddenly appears, plucked out of
nineteenth-century England and dropped onto a twentieth-century
French path, reading her novel Wuthering Heights. The Parisians
hate Emily on sight, whip out a Zippo lighter, set her crinoline
skirts on fire, burn her to a crisp . . . and walk on.

A slap in the face for classical literature? Perhaps, but it doesn't
happen again. This isn’t a time-travel movie. Nobody else shows up
out of the past or future; just Emily; just once. A rule made to be
broken.

The desire to turn the Archplot on its head began early in this
century. Writers such as August Strindberg, Ernst Toller, Virginia
Woolf, fames Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and William S. Burroughs felt
the need to sever the links between the artist and external reality,
and with it, between the artist and the greater part of the audience.
Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Stream of Consciousness,
Theatre of the Absurd, the antinovel, and cinematic antistructure
may differ in technique but share the same result: a retreat inside
the artist’s private world to which the audience is admitted at the
artist’s discretion. These are worlds in which not only are events

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM * 55

atemporal, coincidental, fragmented, and chaotic, but characters do
not operate within a recognizable psychology. Neither sane nor
insane, they are either deliberately inconsistent or overtly symbolic.

Films in this mode are not metaphors for “life as lived,” but for
“life as thought about.” They reflect not reality, but the solipsism of
the filmmaker, and in doing so, stretch the limits of story design
toward didactic and ideational structures. However, the inconsistent
reality of an Antiplot such as WEEKEND has a unity of sorts. When
done well, it’s felt to be an expression of the subjective state of mind
of the filmmaker. This sense of a single perception, no matter how
incoherent, holds the work together for audiences willing to venture
into its distortions.

ARCHPLOT

BIG

MARTY 1
TOP HAT
CHINATOWN
THE HUSTLER
MEN IN BLACK
THELMA & LOUISE
DR. STRANGELOVE
THE SEVEN SAMURAI
A FISH CALLED WANDA
BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK
THE BAD & THE BEAUTIFUL
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

NASHVILLE
THE CRYING GAME
THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS

'3 WOMEN
' BLOW UP
' PARIS, TEXAS
'WINTER LIGHT
^TENDER MERCIES
TL DESERTO ROSSO
'FIVE EASY PIECES
'THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST
' IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES

BARTON

FINK

WHEN HARRY
MET SALLY'

8V2 N
WEEKEND'

BAD TIMING ’
WAYNE'S WORLD'
CHUNGKING EXPRESS'*

A ZED AND TWO NOUGHTS'
MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON
THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE

MINIPLOT

ANTIPLOT

56 4 ROBERT MCKEE

The seven formal contradictions and contrasts listed above are
not hard and fast. There are unlimited shades and degrees of open¬
ness/closedness, passivity/activity, consistent/inconsistent reality,
and the like. All storytelling possibilities are distributed inside the
story design triangle, but very few films are of such purity of form
that they settle at its extreme corners. Each side of the triangle is a
spectrum of structural choices, and writers slide their stories along
these lines, blending or borrowing from each extreme.

THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS and THE CRYING GAME fall
halfway between Archplot and Miniplot. Each tells the tale of a
rather passive isolate; each leaves its ending open as the future of
the subplot’s love story goes unanswered. Neither is as classically
designed as CHINATOWN or THE SEVEN SAMURAI, nor as
minimalistic as FIVE EASY PIECES or THE SCENT OF GREEN
PAPAYA.

Multiplot films are also less than classical and more than min¬
imal. The works of Robert Altman, a master of this form, span a
spectrum of possibilities. A Multiplot work may be “hard,” tending
toward Archplot, as individual stories turn frequently with strong
external consequences (NASHVILLE), or “soft,” leaning toward
Miniplot, as plot lines slow their pace and action becomes internal¬
ized (3 WOMEN).

A film could be quasi-Antiplot. When, for example, Nora Ephron
and Rob Reiner inserted scenes of Mockumentary into WHEN
HARRY MET SALLY, his film’s overall “reality” came into question.
The documentary-styled interviews of older couples looking back on
how they met are in fact delightfully scripted scenes with actors
working in a documentary style. These false realities sandwiched
inside an otherwise conventional love story pushed the film toward
the inconsistent reality of antistructure and self-reflexive satire.

A film like BARTON FINK sits at the center, drawing qualities
from each of the three extremes. It begins as the story of a young
New York playwright (single protagonist) who's trying to make his
mark in Hollywood (active conflict with external forces)— Archplot.
But Fink (John Turturro) becomes more and more reclusive and
suffers a severe writer’s block (inner conflict)— Miniplot. When

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM + 57

that progresses into hallucination, we grow less and less sure of
what’s real, what’s fantasy (inconsistent realities), until nothing can
be trusted (fractured temporal and causal order)— Antiplot . The
ending is rather open, with Fink staring out to sea, but it’s fairly
certain he’ll never write in that town again.

Change Versus Stasis

Above the line drawn between Miniplot and Antiplot are stories in
which life clearly changes. At the limits of Miniplot, however,
change may be virtually invisible because it occurs at the deepest
level of inner conflict: HUSBANDS. Change at the limits of
Antiplot may explode into a cosmic joke: MONTY PYTHON AND
THE HOLY GRAIL. But in both cases stories arc and life changes
for better or worse.

Below this line stories remain in stasis and do not arc. The
value-charged condition of the character’s life at the end of the

58 + ROBERT MCKEE

film is virtually identical to that at the opening. Story dissolves
into portraiture, either a portrait of verisimilitude or one of absur¬
dity. I term these films Nonplot. Although they inform us, touch
us, and have their own rhetorical or formal structures, they do not
tell story. Therefore, they fall outside the story triangle and into a
realm that would include everything that could be loosely called
“narrative."

In slice-of-life works such as UMBERTO D, FACES, and
NAKED, we discover protagonists leading lonely, troubled lives.
They’re tested by even more suffering, but by the film’s end they
seem resigned to the pain of life, even ready for more. In SHORT
CUTS, individual lives are altered within its many story lines, but a
soulless malaise bookends the film and permeates everything, until
murder and suicide seem a natural part of the landscape. Although
nothing changes within the universe of a Nonplot, we gain a
sobering insight and hopefully something changes within us.

Antistructured Nonplots also trace a circular pattern but turn it
with absurdity and satire done in an supra-unnaturalistic style.
MASCULINE FEMININE (France/1966), THE DISCREET
CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (France/1972), and PHANTOM
OF LIBERTY (France/1974) string together scenes that ridicule
bourgeois antics, sexual and political, but the blind fools of the
opening scenes are just as blind and foolish when the closing titles
roll.

THE POLITICS OF STORY DESIGN

In an ideal world art and politics would never touch. In reality they
can't keep their hands off each other. So as in all things, politics lurks
inside the story triangle: the politics of taste, the politics of festivals
and awards, and, most important, the politics of artistic versus com¬
mercial success. And as in all things political, the distortion of truth
is greatest at the extremes. Each of us has a natural address some¬
where on the story triangle. The danger is that for reasons more ideo¬
logical than personal, you may feel compelled to leave home and
work in a distant comer, trapping yourself into designing stories you

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM + 59

don’t in your heart believe. But if you take an honest look at film’s
often specious polemics, you won’t lose your way.

Over the years the primary political issue in cinema has been
“Hollywood film” versus “art film.” Although the terms seem
dated, their partisans are very contemporary and vocal. Tradition¬
ally, their arguments have been framed in terms of big budget
versus low budget, special effects versus painterly composition, the
star system versus ensemble acting, private finance versus govern¬
ment support, and auteurs versus guns-for-hire. But hiding inside
these debates are two diametrically opposed visions of life. The cru¬
cial frontier stretches across the bottom of story triangle: stasis
versus change, a philosophical contradiction with profound impli¬
cations for the writer. Let’s begin by defining terms:

The concept “Hollywood film" does not include REVERSAL OF
FORTUNE, Q & A, DRUGSTORE COWBOY, POSTCARDS
FROM THE EDGE, SALVADOR, RUNNING ON EMPTY, BLUE
VELVET, BOB ROBERTS, JFK, DANGEROUS LIAISONS, THE
FISHER KING, DO THE RIGHT THING, or EVERYBODY SAYS I
LOVE YOU. These films, and many more like them, are acclaimed
international successes produced by Hollywood studios. THE
ACCIDENTAL TOURIST made more than $250 million world¬
wide, surpassing most Action films, but doesn’t fall within the defi¬
nition. The political meaning of “Hollywood film” is narrowed to
thirty or forty special effects-dominated flicks and an equal
number of farces and romances that Hollywood makes each year—
far less than half of the town’s output.

“Art film," in the broadest sense, means non-Hollywood, more
specifically foreign film, even more specifically European film.
Each year western Europe produces over four hundred films, gen¬
erally more than Hollywood. “Art film,” however, doesn’t refer to
the large number of European productions that are blood-spattered
action, hard-core pornography, or slapstick farce. In the language
of cafe criticism “art film” (a silly phrase—imagine “art novel” or
“art theatre”) is restricted to that trickle of excellent films, like
BABETTE’S FEAST, IL POSTINO, or MAN BITES DOG, that
manage to cross the Atlantic.

6o 4 ROBERT MCKEE

These terms were coined in the wars of cultural politics and
point to vastly different, if not contradictory, views of reality. Holly¬
wood filmmakers tend to be overly (some would say foolishly) opti¬
mistic about the capacity of life to change—especially for the
better. Consequently, to express this vision they rely on the Arch¬
plot and an inordinately high percentage of positive endings. Non-
Hollywood filmmakers tend to be overly (some would say chicly)
pessimistic about change, professing that the more life changes,
the more it stays the same, or, worse, that change brings suffering.
Consequently, to express the futility, meaninglessness, or destruc¬
tiveness of change, they tend to make static, Nonplot portraiture or
extreme Miniplots and Antiplots with negative endings.

These are tendencies, of course, with exceptions on both sides
of the Atlantic, but the dichotomy is real and deeper than the seas
that separate the Old World from the New. Americans are escapees
from prisons of stagnant culture and rigid class who crave change.
We change and change again, trying to find what, if anything,
works. After weaving the trillion-dollar safety net of the Great
Society, we're now shredding it. The Old World, on the other hand,
has learned through centuries of hard experience to fear such
change, that social transformations inevitably bring war, famine,
chaos.

The result is our polarized attitude toward story: The ingen¬
uous optimism of Hollywood (not naive about change but about its
insistence on positive change) versus the equally ingenuous pes¬
simism of the art film (not naive about the human condition but
about its insistence that it will never be other than negative or
static). Too often Hollywood films force an up-ending for reasons
more commercial than truthful; too often non-Hollywood films
cling to the dark side for reasons more fashionable than truthful.
The truth, as always, sits somewhere in the middle.

The art film’s focus on inner conflict draws the interest of
those with advanced degrees, because the inner world is where the
highly educated spend a large amount of time. Minimalists, how¬
ever, often overestimate the appetite of even the most self-absorbed
minds for a diet of nothing but inner conflict. Worse, they also

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM + 61

overestimate their talent to express the unseeable on screen. By the
same token, Hollywood’s action filmmakers underestimate the
interest of their audience in character, thought, and feeling, and,
worse, overestimate their ability to avoid Action genre cliches.

Because story in Hollywood film is often forced and cliched,
directors must compensate with something else to hold the audi¬
ence’s attention, resorting to transformation effects and cacopho¬
nous derring-do: THE FIFTH ELEMENT. In the same vein, because
story is often thin or absent in the art film, again, directors must
compensate. In this case, with one of two possibilities: information
or sensory stimulation. Either dialogue-heavy scenes of political
argument, philosophical musing, and characters’ self-conscious
descriptions of their emotions; or lush production design and pho¬
tography or musical scores to pleasure the audience’s senses: THE
ENGLISH PATIENT.

The sad truth of the political wars of contemporary cinema is
that the excesses of both “art film” and “Hollywood film” are the
mirror images of each other: The telling is forced to become a daz¬
zling surface of spectacle and sound to distract the audience from
the vacancy and falsity of the story . . . and in both boredom follows
as night the day.

Behind the political squabbling over finance, distribution, and
awards lies a deep cultural divide, reflected in the opposing world¬
views of Archplot versus Miniplot and Antiplot. From story to story
the writer may move anywhere within the triangle, but most of us
feel more at home in one place or another. You must make your
own “political” choices and decide where you reside. As you do, let
me offer these points for you to weigh:

The Writer Must Earn His Living Writing

Writing while holding down a forty-hour-a-week job is possible.
Thousands have done it. But in time, exhaustion sets in, concentra¬
tion wanders, creativity crumbles, and you’re tempted to quit.
Before you do, you must find a way to earn your living from your
writing. A talented writer’s survival in the real world of film and

62 « ROBERT MCKEE

television, theatre, and publishing begins with his recognition of
this fact: As story design moves away from the Archplot and down
the triangle toward the far reaches of Miniplot, Antiplot, and Non¬
plot, the audience shrinks.

This atrophy has nothing to do with quality or a lack of it. All
three corners of the story triangle gleam with masterworks that the
world treasures, pieces of perfection for our imperfect world.
Rather, the audience shrinks for this reason: Most human beings
believe that life brings closed experiences of absolute, irreversible
change; that their greatest sources of conflict are external to them¬
selves; that they are the single and active protagonists of their own
existence; that their existence operates through continuous time
within a consistent, causally interconnected reality; and that inside
this reality events happen for explainable and meaningful reasons.
Since our first ancestor stared into a fire of his own making and
thought the thought, “I am,” this is how human beings have seen
the world and themselves in it. Classical design is a mirror of the
human mind.

Classical design is a model of memory and anticipation. When
we think back to the past, do we piece events together antistruc¬
tured? Minimalistically? No. We collect and shape memories
around an Archplot to bring the past back vividly. When we day¬
dream about the future, what we dread or pray will happen, is our
vision minimalistic? Antistructured? No, we mold our fantasies
and hopes into an Archplot. Classical design displays the temporal,
spatial, and causal patterns of human perception, outside which
the mind rebels.

Classical design is not a Western view of life. For thousands of
years, from the Levant to Java to Japan, the storytellers of Asia have
framed their works within the Archplot, spinning yarns of high
adventure and great passion. As the rise of Asian film has shown,
Eastern screenwriters draw on the same principles of classical
design used in the West, enriching their tellings with a unique wit
and irony. The Archplot is neither ancient nor modern, Western
nor Eastern; it is human.

When the audience senses that a story is drifting too close to fic-

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM + 63

tional realities it finds tedious or meaningless, it feels alienated and
turns away. This is true of intelligent, sensitive people of all incomes
and backgrounds. The vast majority of human beings cannot
endorse the inconsistent realities of Antiplot, the internalized pas¬
sivity of Miniplot, and the static circularity of Nonplot as metaphors
for life as they live it. As story reaches the bottom of the triangle the
audience has shrunk to those loyal, cinephile intellectuals who like
to have their realities twisted once in a while. This is an enthusiastic,
challenging audience ... but a very small audience.

If the audience shrinks, the budget must shrink. This is the
law. In 1961 Alain Robbe-Grillet wrote LAST YEAR AT MARIEN-
BAD and throughout the seventies and eighties he wrote brilliant
Antiplot puzzle pieces—films more about the art of writing than
about the act of living. I once asked him how, despite the anticom¬
mercial bent of his films, he did it. He said he’d never spent more
than $750,000 to make a film and never would. His audience was
faithful but meager. At an ultra-low budget his investors doubled
their money and kept him in the director’s chair. But at $2 million
they would lose their shirts and he his seat. Robbe-Grillet was both
visionary and pragmatic.

If, like Robbe-Grillet, you wish to write Miniplot or Antiplot,
and can find a non-Hollywood producer to work at low budget, and
are happy with relatively little money for yourself, good. Do it. But
when you write for Hollywood, a low-budget script is no asset. Sea¬
soned professionals who read your minimalist or antistructured
piece may applaud your handling of image, but decline to be
involved because experience has taught them that if the story is
inconsequential, so is the audience.

Even modest Hollywood budgets run into the tens of millions of
dollars, and each film must find an audience large enough to repay
its cost at a profit greater than the same money would have earned
in a secured investment. Why should investors place millions at
enormous jeopardy when they can put it into real estate and at least
have a building when they’re done, not something that’s shown in a
couple of film festivals, shoved into a refrigerated vault, and for¬
gotten? If a Hollywood studio is going to take this wild ride with

64 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

you, you must write a film that has at least a chance of recouping its
huge risk. In other words, a film that leans toward the Archplot.

The Writer Must Master Classical Form

By instinct or study, fine writers recognize that minimalism and
antistructure are not independent forms but reactions to the Clas¬
sical. Miniplot and Antiplot were born out of the Archplot—one
shrinks it, the other contradicts it. The avant-garde exists to oppose
the popular and commercial, until it too becomes popular and com¬
mercial, then it turns to attack itself. If Nonplot “art films” went
hot and were raking in money, the avant-garde would revolt,
denounce Hollywood for selling out to portraiture, and seize the
Classical for its own.

These cycles between formality/freedom, symmetry/asymmetry
are as old as Attic theatre. The history of art is a history of revivals:
Establishment icons are shattered by an avant-garde that in time
becomes the new establishment to be attacked by a new avant-garde
that uses its grandfather’s forms of weapons. Rock ’ri roll, which
was named after black slang for sex, began as an avant-garde move¬
ment against the white-bread sounds of the postwar era. Now it’s
the definition of musical aristocracy and even used as church music.

The serious use of Antiplot devices not only has gone out of
fashion but has become a joke. A vein of dark satire has always run
through antistructure works, from UN CHIEN ANDALOU to
WEEKEND, but now direct address to camera, inconsistent reali¬
ties, and alternative endings are the staples of film farce. Antiplot
gags that began with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s THE ROAD TO
MOROCCO have been worked into the likes of BLAZING SAD¬
DLES, the PYTHON films, and WAYNE’S WORLD. Story tech¬
niques that once struck us as dangerous and revolutionary now
seem toothless but charming.

Respecting these cycles, great storytellers have always known
that, regardless of background or education, everyone, consciously
or instinctively, enters the story ritual with Classical anticipation.
Therefore, to make Miniplot and Antiplot work the writer must

THE STRUCTURE SPECTRUM + 65

play with or against this expectancy. Only by carefully and cre¬
atively shattering or bending the Classical form can the artist lead
the audience to perceive the inner life hidden in a Miniplot or to
accept the chilling absurdity of an Antiplot. But how can a writer
creatively reduce or reverse that which he does not understand?

Writers who found success in the deep corners of the story tri¬
angle knew that the starting point of understanding was at the top
and began their careers in the Classical. Bergman wrote and
directed love stories and social and historical dramas for twenty
years before he dared venture into the minimalism of THE
SILENCE or the antistructure of PERSONA. Fellini made I
VITIONI and LA STRADA before he risked the Miniplot of AMAR-
CORD or the Antiplot of 872. Godard made BREATHLESS before
WEEKEND. Robert Altman perfected his story talents in the TV
series Bonanza and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. First, the masters
mastered the Archplot.

I sympathize with the youthful desire to make a first screenplay
read like PERSONA. But the dream of joining the avant-garde
must wait while, like the artists before you, you too gain mastery of
Classical form. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that you under¬
stand Archplot because you’ve seen the movies. You’ll know you
understand it when you can do it. The writer works at his skills until
knowledge shifts from the left side of the brain to the right, until
intellectual awareness becomes living craft.

The Writer Must Believe in What He Writes

Stanislavski asked his actors: Are you in love with the art in your¬
self or yourself in the art? You too must examine your motives for
wanting to write the way you write. Why do your screenplays find
their way to one corner of the triangle or the other? What is your
vision?

Each tale you create says to the audience: “I believe life is like
this.” Every moment must be filled with your passionate conviction
or we smell a phony. If you write minimalism, do you believe in
the meanings of this form? Has experience convinced you that life

66 4 ROBERT MCKEE

brings little or no change? If your ambition is anticlassicism, are
you convinced of the random meaninglessness of life? If your
answer is a passionate yes, then write your Miniplot or Antiplot
and do everything possible to see it made.

For the vast majority, however, the honest answer to these
questions is no. Yet antistructure and, in particular, minimalism
still attract young writers like a Pied Piper. Why? I suspect that for
many it isn’t the intrinsic meanings of such forms that draw their
interest. Rather, it’s what these forms represent extrinsically. In
other words, politics. It isn’t what Antiplot and Miniplot are, it’s
what they’re not : They’re not Hollywood.

The young are taught that Hollywood and art are antithetical.
The novice, therefore, wanting to be recognized as an artist, falls
into the trap of writing a screenplay not for what it is, but for what
it’s not. He avoids closure, active characters, chronology, and
causality to avoid the taint of commercialism. As a result, preten¬
tiousness poisons his work.

A story is the embodiment of our ideas and passions in
Edmund Husserl’s phrase, “an objective correlative” for the feel¬
ings and insights we wish to instill in the audience. When you
work with one eye on your script and the other on Hollywood,
making eccentric choices to avoid the taint of commercialism, you
produce the literary equivalent of a temper tantrum. Like a child
living in the shadow of a powerful father, you break Hollywood's
“rules” because it makes you feel free. But angry contradiction of
the patriarch is not creativity; it’s delinquency calling for attention.
Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as
slavishly following the commercial imperative. Write only what you
believe.

3

STRUCTURE AND SETTING

THE WAR ON CLICHE

This may be the most demanding time in history to be a writer.
Compare the story-saturated audience of today to that of centuries
past. How many times a year did educated Victorians go to the the¬
atre? In a era of huge families and no automatic dishwashers, how
much time did they have for fiction? In a typical week our great-
great-grandparents may have read or seen five or six hours of
story—what many of us now consume per day. By the time
modern filmgoers sit down to your work, they’ve absorbed tens of
thousands of hours of TV, movies, prose, and theatre. What will
you create that they haven’t seen before? Where will you find a
truly original story? How will you win the war on cliche?

Cliche is at the root of audience dissatisfaction, and like a
plague spread through ignorance, it now infects all story media.
Too often we close novels or exit theatres bored by an ending that
was obvious from the beginning, disgruntled because we’ve seen
these cliched scenes and characters too many times before. The
cause of this worldwide epidemic is simple and clear; the source of
all cliches can be traced to one thing and one thing alone: The
writer does not know the world of his story.

Such writers select a setting and launch a screenplay assuming a
knowledge of their fictional world that they don’t have. As they reach
into their minds for material, they come up empty. So where do they
run? To films and TV, novels and plays with similar settings. From

67

68 4 ROBERT MCKEE

the works of other writers they crib scenes we’ve seen before,
paraphrase dialogue we've heard before, disguise characters we’ve
met before, and pass them off as their own. They reheat literary
leftovers and serve up plates of boredom because, regardless of
their talents, they lack an in-depth understanding of their story’s
setting and all it contains. Knowledge of and insight into the world
of your story is fundamental to the achievement of originality and
excellence.

SETTING

A story's SETTING is four-dimensional— Period, Duration,

Location, Level of Conflict.

The first dimension of time is Period. Is the story set in the con¬
temporary world? In history? A hypothetical future? Or is it that
rare fantasy, such as ANIMAL FARM or WATERSHIP DOWN, in
which location in time is unknowable and irrelevant?

PERIOD is a story's place in time.

Duration is the second dimension of time. How much time
does the story span within the lives of your characters? Decades?
Years? Months? Days? Is it that rare work in which storytime
equals screentime, such as MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, a two-
hour movie about a two-hour dinner?

Or rarer still, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, a film that lique¬
fies time into timelessness? It’s conceivable, through cross-cut-
ting, overlap, repetition, and/or slow motion, for screentime to
surpass storytime. Although no feature-length film has attempted
this, a few sequences have done it brilliantly—most famous of all,
the “Odessa Steps” sequence of THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN.
The actual assault by the Tsar’s army on the Odessa protesters
took no more than two or three minutes, the time needed for jack-
booted feet to march down the steps from top to bottom.
Onscreen the terror expands to five times this length.

STRUCTURE AND SETTING + 69

DURATION is a story's length through time.

Location is the story’s physical dimension. What is the story’s
specific geography? In what town? On what streets? What build¬
ings on those streets? What rooms inside those buildings? Up what
mountain? Across what desert? A voyage to what planet?

LOCATION is a story's place in space.

Level of Conflict is the human dimension. A setting includes
not only itsphysical and temporal domain, but social as well. This
dimension becomes vertical in this sense: At what Level of Conflict
do you pitch your telling? No matter how externalized in institutions
or internalized in individuals, the political, economic, ideological,
biological, and psychological forces of society shape events as much
as period, landscape, or costume. Therefore, the cast of characters,
containing its various levels of conflict, is part of a story’s setting.

Does your story focus on the inner, even unconscious conflicts
within your characters? Or coming up a level, on personal conflicts?
Or higher and wider, on battles with institutions in society? Wider
still, on struggles against forces of the environment? From the sub¬
conscious to the stars, through all the multilayered experiences of life,
your story may be set at any one or any combination of these levels.

LEVEL OF CONFLICT is the story's position on the hier¬
archy of human struggles.

The Relationship Between Structure and Setting

A story’s setting sharply defines and confines its possibilities.

Although your setting is a fiction, not everything that comes to
mind may be allowed to happen in it. Within any world, no matter
how imaginary, only certain events are possible or probable.

If your drama is set among the gated estates of West L.A., we
won’t see homeowners protesting social injustice by rioting in their
tree-lined streets, although they might throw a thousand-dollar-a-
plate fund-raiser. If your setting is the housing projects of East

70 + ROBERT MCKEE

L.A/s ghetto, these citizens won’t dine at thousand-dollar-a-plate
galas, but they might hit the streets to demand change.

A STORY must obey its own internal laws of probability.

The event choices of the writer, therefore, are limited
to the possibilities and probabilities within the world
he creates.

Each fictional world creates a unique cosmology and makes its
own “rules” for how and why things happen within it. No matter
how realistic or bizarre the setting, once its causal principles are
established, they cannot change. In fact,- of all genres Fantasy is the
most rigid and structurally conventional. We give the fantasy writer
one great leap away from reality, then demand tight-knit probabili¬
ties and no coincidence—the strict Archplot of THE WIZARD OF
OZ, for example. On the other hand, a gritty realism often allows
leaps in logic. In THE USUAL SUSPECTS, for example, screen¬
writer Christopher McQuarrie arrests his wild improbabilities
inside the “law” of free association.

Stories do not materialize from a void but grow out of materials
already in history and human experience. From its first glimpse of
the first image, the audience inspects your fictional universe,
sorting the possible from the impossible, the likely from the
unlikely. Consciously and unconsciously, it wants to know your
“laws,” to learn how and why things happen in your specific world.
You create these possibilities and limitations through your personal
choice of setting and the way you work within it. Having invented
these strictures, you’re bound to a contract you must keep. For once
the audience grasps the laws of your reality, it feels violated if you
break them and rejects your work as illogical and unconvincing.

Seen this way, the setting may feel like a straitjacket to the imag¬
ination. When working in development, I’m often struck by how
writers try to wriggle out of its restraints by refusing to be specific.
“What's your setting?” I’ll ask. “America,” the writer cheerfully
answers. “Sounds a bit vast. Got any particular neighborhood in
mind?” “Bob, it won't matter. This is your quintessential American

STRUCTURE AND SETTING + 71

story. It's about divorce. What could be more American? We can set
it in Louisiana, New York, or Idaho. Won’t matter.” But it matters
absolutely. Breakup in the Bayou bears litde resemblance to a multi-
million-dollar Park Avenue litigation, and neither looks like infi¬
delity on a potato farm. There is no such thing as a portable story.
An honest story is at home in one, and only one, place and time.

THE PRINCIPLE OF CREATIVE LIMITATION

Limitation is vital. The first step toward a well-told story is to create
a small, knowable world. Artists by nature crave freedom, so the
principle that the structure/setting relationship restricts creative
choices may stir the rebel in you. With a closer look, however,
you’ll see that this relationship couldn’t be more positive. The con¬
straint that setting imposes on story design doesn't inhibit cre¬
ativity; it inspires it.

All fine stories take place within a limited, knowable world. No
matter how grand a fictional world may seem, with a close look
you’ll discover that it’s remarkably small. CRIME AND PUNISH¬
MENT is microscopic. WAR AND PEACE, although played against
a landscape of Russia in turmoil, is the focused tale of a handful of
characters and their interrelated families. DR. STRANGE LOVE is
set in the office of General Jack D. Ripper, a Flying Fortress
heading for Russia, and the War Room of the Pentagon. It climaxes
in planetary nuclear annihilation, but the telling is limited to three
sets and eight principal characters.

The world of a story must be small enough that the mind of a
single artist can surround the fictional universe it creates and come
to know it in the same depth and detail that God knows the one He
created. As my mother used to say, “Not a sparrow falls that God
does not know." Not a sparrow should fall in the world of a writer
that he wouldn’t know. By the time you finish your last draft, you
must possess a commanding knowledge of your setting in such
depth and detail that no one could raise a question about your
world—from the eating habits of your characters to the weather in
September—that you couldn’t answer instantly.

72 + ROBERT MCKEE.

A “small” world, however, does not mean a trivial world. Art
consists of separating one tiny piece from the rest of the universe
and holding it up in such a way that it appears to be the most
important, fascinating thing of this moment. “Small,” in this case,
means knowable.

“Commanding knowledge” does not mean an extended awareness
into every crevice of existence. It means knowledge of all that's ger¬
mane. This may seem an impossible ideal, but the best writers attain it
every day. What relevant question about the time, place, and characters
of CRIES AND WHISPERS would elude Ingmar Bergman? Or David
Mamet of GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS? Or John Cleese of A FISH
CALLED WANDA? It’s not that fine artists give deliberate, conscious
thought to each and every aspect of life implied by their stories, but
at some level they absorb it all. Great writers know. Therefore, work
within what’s knowable. A vast, populous world stretches the mind
so thinly that knowledge must be superficial. A limited world and
restricted cast offer the possibility of knowledge in depth and breadth.

The irony of setting versus story is this: The larger the world, the
more diluted the knowledge of the writer, therefore the fewer his creative
choices and the more cliched the story. The smaller the world, the more
complete the knowledge of the writer, therefore the greater his creative
choices. Result: a fully original story and victory in the war on cliche.

RESEARCH

The key to winning this war is research, taking the time and effort
to acquire knowledge. I suggest these specific methods: research of
memory, research of imagination, research of fact. Generally, a
story needs all three.

Memory

Lean back from your desk and ask, “What do I know from personal
experience that touches on my characters’ lives?”

You're writing, let's say, about a middle-aged executive who faces
a career-making/career-destroying presentation. His personal and

STRUCTURE AND SETTING ♦ 73

professional life hangs in the balance. He’s afraid. How does fear
feel? Slowly, memory takes you back to the day your mother, for rea¬
sons you’ll never understand, locked you in a closet, left the house,
and didn’t come back until the next day. Bring back those long,
fright-filled hours when the dark smothered you. Could your char¬
acter feel the same? If so, vividly describe your day and night in the
closet. You may think you know, but you don’t know you know until
you can write it down. Research is not daydreaming. Explore your
past, relive it, then write it down. In your head it’s only memory, but
written down it becomes working knowledge. Now with the bile of
fear in your belly, write an honest, one-of-a-kind scene.

Imagination

Lean back and ask, “What would it be like to live my character's life
hour by hour, day by day?”

In vivid detail sketch how your characters shop, make love,
pray—scenes that may or may not find their way into your story,
but draw you into your imagined world until it feels like deja vu.
While memory gives us whole chunks of life, imagination takes
fragments, slivers of dream, and chips of experience that seem
unrelated, then seeks their hidden connections and merges them
into a whole. Having found these links and envisioned the scenes,
write them down. A working imagination is research.

Fact

Have you ever had writer’s block? Scary, isn’t it? Days drag by and
nothing gets written. Cleaning the garage looks like fun. You
rearrange your desk over and over and over until you think you’re
losing your mind. I know a cure, but it isn’t a trip to your psychia¬
trist. It’s a trip to the library.

You’re blocked because you have nothing to say. Your talent
didn’t abandon you. If you had something to say, you couldn’t stop
yourself from writing. You can’t kill your talent, but you can starve it
into a coma through ignorance. For no matter how talented, the

74 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

ignorant cannot write. Talent must be stimulated by facts and ideas.
Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on
cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and its cousin, depression.

Suppose, for example, you're writing in the genre of Domestic
Drama. You were raised in a family, perhaps you’ve raised a family,
you’ve seen families, you can imagine families. But if you were go to
the library and read respected works on the dynamics of family life,
two very important things would happen:

1. Everything life has taught you would be powerfully
confirmed. On page after page you’ll recognize your own
family. This discovery, that your personal experience is
universal, is critical. It means you’ll have an audience.

You'll write in a singular way, but audiences everywhere
will understand because the patterns of family are
ubiquitous. What you’ve experienced in your domestic life
is analogous to all others—the rivalries and alliances,
loyalties and betrayals, pains and joys. As you express
emotions you feel are yours and yours alone, each member
of the audience will recognize them as his and his alone.

2. No matter how many families you live in, how many you
observe, or how vivid your imagination, your knowledge of
the nature of family is limited to the finite circle of your
experience. But as you take notes in the library, your solid,
factual research will expand that circle globally. You’ll be
struck by sudden and powerful insights and reach a depth
of understanding you couldn't have gained any other way.

Research from memory, imagination, and fact is often followed
by a phenomenon that authors love to describe in mystical terms:
Characters suddenly spring to life and of their own free will make
choices and take actions that create Turning Points that twist,
build, and turn again until the writer can hardly type fast enough to
keep up with the outpourings.

This “virgin birth” is a charming self-deception writers love to
indulge in, but the sudden impression that the story is writing

STRUCTURE AND SETTING * 75

itself simply marks the moment when a writer’s knowledge of the
subject has reached the saturation point. The writer becomes the
god of his little universe and is amazed by what seems to be spon¬
taneous creation, but is in fact the reward for hard work.

Be warned, however. While research provides material, it's no
substitute for creativity. Biographical, psychological, physical,
political, and historical research of the setting and cast is essential
but pointless if it doesn’t lead to the creation of events. A story is
not an accumulation of information strung into a narrative, but a
design of events to carry us to a meaningful climax.

What’s more, research must not become procrastination. Too
many insecure talents spend years in study and never actually write
anything. Research is meat to feed the beasts of imagination and
invention, never an end in itself. Nor is there a necessary sequence
to research. We do not first fill notebooks full of social, biograph¬
ical, and historical studies, and once all this work is done, begin to
compose a story. Creativity is rarely so rational. Origination and
exploration go on alternatively.

Imagine writing a Psycho-Thriller. You begin perhaps with a
“What if.. .” What would happen if a psychiatrist violated her profes¬
sional ethics and began an affair with her patient? Intrigued, you
wonder, Who is this doctor? Patient? Perhaps he’s a soldier, shell¬
shocked, catatonic. Why does she fall for him? You analyze and
explore until growing knowledge leads to wild speculation: Suppose
she falls when her treatment seems to work a miracle: Under hyp¬
nosis his wide-eyed paralysis melts away to reveal a beautiful, almost
angelic personality.

That turn seems too sweet to be true, so you go on a hunt in
the other direction, and deep in your studies you come across the
concept of successful schizophrenia : Some psychotics possess such
extreme intelligence and willpower they can easily hide their mad¬
ness from everyone around them, even their psychiatrists. Could
your patient be one of these? Could your doctor be in love with a
madman she thinks she’s cured?

As new ideas seed your story, story and characters grow; as
your story grows, questions are raised and it hungers for more

76 * ROBERT MCKEE

research. Creation and investigation go back and forth, making
demands on each other, pushing and pulling this way or that until
the story shakes itself out, complete and alive.

CREATIVE CHOICES

Fine writing is never one to one, never a matter of devising the exact
number of events necessary to fill a story, then penciling in dialogue.
Creativity is five to one, perhaps ten or twenty to one. The craft
demands the invention of far more material than you can possibly use,
then the astute selection from this quantity of quality events, moments
of originality that are true to character and true to world. When actors
compliment each other, for example, they often say, “I like your
choices.” They know that if a colleague has arrived at a beautiful
moment, it's because in rehearsal the actor tried it twenty different
ways, then chose the one perfect moment. The same is true for us.

CREATIVITY means creative choices of inclusion and

exclusion.

Imagine writing a romantic comedy set on the East Side of
Manhattan. Your thoughts meander back and forth between the
separate lives of your characters, searching for that perfect moment
when the lovers meet. Then sudden inspiration: “A singles bar!
That’s it! They meet at P. J. Clarke’s!” And why not? Given the
affluent New Yorkers of your imagining, meeting in a singles bar is
certainly possible. Why not? Because it’s a dreadful cliche. It was a
fresh idea when Dustin Hoffman met Mia Farrow in JOHN AND
MARY, but since then, yuppie lovers have bumped into each other
in a singles bar in film after film, soap operas, and sitcoms.

But if you know the craft, you know how to cure cliches: Sketch
a list of five, ten, fifteen different “East Side lovers meet” scenes.
Why? Because experienced writers never trust so-called inspiration.
More often than not, inspiration is the first idea picked off the top
of your head, and sitting on the top of your head is every film
you’ve ever seen, every novel you’ve ever read, offering cliches to

STRUCTURE AND SETTING « 77

pluck. This is why we fall in love with an idea on Monday, sleep on
it, then reread it with disgust on Tuesday as we realize we’ve seen
this cliche in a dozen other works. True inspiration comes from a
deeper source, so let loose your imagination and experiment:

1. Singles Bar. Cliche, but a choice. Don’t throw it away yet.

2. Park Avenue. A tire blows out on his BMW. He stands at
the curb, helpless in his three-piece suit. She comes along
on her motorcycle and takes pity on him. She gets out the
spare, and as she doctors the car, he plays nurse, handing
her jack handle, lug nuts, wheel cover . . . until suddenly
eyes meet and sparks fly.

3. Toilet. She’s so drunk at the office Christmas party that she
stumbles into the men’s room to throw up. He finds her col¬
lapsed on the floor. Quickly, before others enter, he locks
the stall door and helps her through her illness. When the
coast is clear he sneaks her out, saving her embarrassment.

On and on the list grows. You needn’t write out these scenes in
full. You’re on a search for ideas, so simply sketch the bold strokes
of what happens. If you know your characters and world in depth, a
dozen or more such scenes won’t be a difficult task. Once you’ve
exhausted your best ideas, survey your list, asking these questions:
Which scene is truest to my characters? Truest to their world? And
has never been on the screen quite this way before? This is the one you
write into the screenplay.

Suppose, however, as you question the meeting-cute scenes on
your list, deep in your gut you realize that, while all have their
virtues, your first impression was right. Cliche or not, these lovers
would meet in a singles bar; nothing could be more expressive of
their natures and milieu. Now what do you do? Follow your instincts
and start a new list: a dozen different ways to meet in a singles bar.
Research this world, hang out, observe the crowd, get involved, until
you know the singles bar scene like no writer before you.

Scanning your new list you ask the same questions: Which
variation is truest to character and world? Which has never been

78 4 ROBERT MCKEE

onscreen before? When your script becomes a film and the camera
dollies toward a singles bar, the audience’s first reaction may be,
“Oh man, not another singles bar scene.” But then you take them
through the door, show them what really goes on in those meat
racks. If you've done your task well, jaws will drop and heads will
nod: “That’s right! It’s not ‘What’s your astrological sign? Read any
good books lately?’ That's the embarrassment, danger. That's the
truth.”

If your finished screenplay contains every scene you’ve ever
written, if you’ve never thrown an idea away, if your rewriting is
little more than tinkering with dialogue, your work will almost cer¬
tainly fail. No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our
souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best. If, how¬
ever, research inspires a pace of ten to one, even twenty to one, and
if you then make brilliant choices to find that 10 percent of excel¬
lence and bum the rest, every scene will fascinate and the world
will sit in awe of your genius.

No one has to see your failures unless you add vanity to folly
and exhibit them. Genius consists not only of the power to create
expressive beats and scenes, but of the taste, judgment, and will to
weed out and destroy banalities, conceits, false notes, and lies.

4

STRUCTURE AND GENRE

THE FILM GENRES

Through tens of thousands of years of tales told at fireside, four
millennia of the written word, twenty-five hundred years of theatre,
a century of film, and eight decades of broadcasting, countless gen¬
erations of storytellers have spun story into an astonishing diversity
of patterns. To make sense of this outpouring, various systems
have been devised to sort stories according to shared elements,
classifying them by genre. No two systems, however, have ever
agreed on which story elements to use in the sorting, and, there¬
fore, no two agree on the number and kind of genres.

Aristotle gave us the first genres by dividing dramas according
to the value-charge of their ending versus their story design. A
story, he noted, could end on either a positive or a negative charge.
Then each of these two types could be either a Simple design
(ending flat with no turning point or surprise) or a Complex design
(climaxing around a major reversal in the protagonist’s life). The
result is his four basic genres: Simple Tragic, Simple Fortunate,
Complex Tragic, Complex Fortunate.

Over the centuries, however, the lucidity of Aristotle was lost as
genre systems became more and more blurred and bloated. Goethe
listed seven types by subject matter—love, revenge, and so on.
Schiller argued that there must be more but couldn’t name them.
Polti inventoried no less than three dozen different emotions from
which he deduced “Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations,” but his categories

79

8 o ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

such as “An Involuntary Crime Committed for Love” or “Self-Sacrifice
for an Ideal” are vague beyond use. The semiologist Metz reduced all
film edits to eight possibilities he called “syntagmas,” then tried to
schematize all of cinema inside “La Gran Syntagma,” but his effort to
turn art into science crumbled like the Tower of Babel.

The neo-Aristotelian critic Norman Friedman, on the other
hand, developed a system that once again delineates genres by struc¬
ture and values. We’re indebted to Friedman for distinctions such as
the Education Plot , Redemption Plot, and Disillusionment Plot —subtle
forms in which story arcs at the level of inner conflict to bring about
deep changes within the mind or moral nature of the protagonist.

While scholars dispute definitions and systems, the audience is
already a genre expert. It enters each film armed with a complex set
of anticipations learned through a lifetime of moviegoing. The
genre sophistication of filmgoers presents the writer with this crit¬
ical challenge: He must not only fulfill audience anticipations, or
risk their confusion and disappointment, but he must lead their
expectations to fresh, unexpected moments, or risk boring them.
This two-handed trick is impossible without a knowledge of genre
that surpasses the audience’s.

Below is the genre and subgenre system used by screen¬
writers—a system that's evolved from practice, not theory, and that
turns on differences of subject, setting, role, event, and values.

1. LOVE STORY. Its subgenre, Buddy Salvation, substitutes
friendship for romantic love: MEAN STREETS, PASSION
FISH, ROMY AND MICHELE’S HIGH SCHOOL REUNION.

2. HORROR FILM. This genre divides into three subgenres:
the Uncanny, in which the source of horror is astounding
but subject to “rational” explanation, such as beings from
outer space, science-made monsters, or a maniac; the
Supernatural, in which the source of horror is an
“irrational” phenomenon from the spirit realm; and the
Super-Uncanny, in which the audience is kept guessing
between the other two possibilities—THE TENANT,

HOUR OF THE WOLF, THE SHINING.

STRUCTURE AND GENRE 4 81

3. MODERN EPIC (the individual versus the state): SPAR-
TACUS, MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, VIVA
ZAPATA!, 1984, THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLINT.

4. WESTERN. The evolution of this genre and its subgenres is
brilliantly traced in Will Wright’s Six Guns and Society.

5. WAR GENRE. Although war is often the setting for another
genre, such as the Love Story, the WAR GENRE is
specifically about combat. Pro-war versus Antiwar are its
primary subgenres. Contemporary films generally oppose
war, but for decades the majority covertly glorified it, even
in its most grisly form.

6. MATURATION PLOT or the coming-of-age story: STAND
BY ME, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, RISKY BUSINESS,
BIG, BAMBI, MURIEL’S WEDDING.

7. REDEMPTION PLOT. Here the film arcs on a moral
change within the protagonist from bad to good: THE
HUSTLER, LORD JIM, DRUGSTORE COWBOY,
SCHINDLER’S LIST, LA PROMESSE.

8. PUNITIVE PLOT. In these the good guy turns bad and is
punished: GREED, THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA
MADRE, MEPHISTO, WALL STREET, FALLING DOWN.

9. TESTING PLOT. Stories of willpower versus temptation to
surrender: THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, COOL HAND
LUKE, FITZCARRALDO, FORREST GUMP.

10. EDUCATION PLOT. This genre arcs on a deep change within
the protagonist’s view of life, people, or self from the negative
(naive, distrustful, fatalistic, self-hating) to the positive (wise,
trusting, optimistic, self-possessed): HAROLD AND
MAUDE, TENDER MERCIES, WINTER LIGHT, IL
POSTINO, GROSS POINTE BLANK, MY BEST FRIEND’S
WEDDING, SHALL WE DANCE,
n. DISILLUSIONMENT PLOT. A deep change of worldview
from the positive to the negative: MRS. PARKER AND
THE VICIOUS CIRCLE, L’ECLISSE, LE FEU FOLLET,

THE GREAT GATSBY, MACBETH.

82 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

Some genres are mega-genres, so large and complex that

they're filled with numerous subgenre variations:

12. COMEDY. Subgenres range from Parody to Satire to
Sitcom to Romantic to Screwball to Farce to Black
Comedy, all differing by the focus of comic attack (bureau¬
cratic folly, upper-class manners, teenage courtship, etc.)
and the degree of ridicule (gentle, caustic, lethal).

13. CRIME. Subgenres vary chiefly by the answer to this ques¬
tion: From whose point of view do we regard the crime?

Murder Mystery (master detective’s POV); Caper (master
criminal's POV); Detective (cop's POV); Gangster (crook’s
POV); Thriller or Revenge Tale (victim’s POV); Courtroom
(lawyer’s POV); Newspaper (reporter’s POV); Espionage
(spy's POV); Prison Drama (inmate’s POV); Film Noir
(POV of a protagonist who may be part criminal, part
detective, part victim of a femme fatale).

14. SOCIAL DRAMA. This genre identifies problems in
society—poverty, the education system, communicable dis¬
eases, the disadvantaged, antisocial rebellion, and the

like—then constructs a story demonstrating a cure. It has a
number of sharply focused subgenres: Domestic Drama
(problems within the family), the Woman's Film
(dilemmas such as career versus family, lover versus
children), Political Drama (corruption in politics), Eco-
Drama (battles to save the environment), Medical Drama
(struggles with physical illness), and Psycho-Drama
(struggles with mental illness).

15. ACTION/ADVENTURE. This often borrows aspects from
other genres such as War or Political Drama to use as
motivation for explosive action and derring-do. If
ACTION/ADVENTURE incorporates ideas such as destiny,
hubris, or the spiritual, it becomes the subgenre High
Adventure: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING. If Mother
Nature is the source of antagonism, it’s a Disaster/Survival
Film: ALIVE, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE.

STRUCTURE AND GENRE « 83

Taking a still wider view, supra-genres are created out of set¬
tings, performance styles, or filmmaking techniques that contain a
host of autonomous genres. They are like mansions of many
rooms where one of the basic genres, subgenres, or any combina¬
tion might find a home:

16 HISTORICAL DRAMA. History is an inexhaustible source of
story material and embraces every type of story imaginable.

The treasure chest of history, however, is sealed with this
warning: What is past must be present. A screenwriter isn't a
poet hoping to be discovered after he’s dead. He must find an
audience today. Therefore, the best use of history, and the
only legitimate excuse to set a film in the past and thereby add
untold millions to the budget, is anachronism—to use the
past as a clear glass through which you show us the present.

Many contemporary antagonisms are so distressing or
loaded with controversy that it’s difficult to dramatize them
in a present-day setting without alienating the audience.

Such dilemmas are often best viewed at a safe distance in
time. HISTORICAL DRAMA polishes the past into a mirror
of the present, making clear and bearable the painful prob¬
lems of racism in GLORY, religious strife in MICHAEL
COLLINS, or violence of all kinds, especially against
women, in UNFORGIVEN.

Christopher Hampton’s DANGEROUS LIAISONS:

Setting a down ending, love/hate story in the France of lace
cuffs and piquant repartee seemed like protocol for
commercial disaster. But the film found a huge audience
by turning a scalding light on a mode of modern hostility
too politically sensitive to be addressed directly: courtship
as combat. Hampton stepped back two centuries to an age
in which sexual politics exploded into a war for sexual
supremacy, where the ascendant emotion was not love but
fear and suspicion of the opposite sex. Despite the antiquated
setting, within minutes the audience felt intimately at
home with its corrupted aristocrats—they are us.

8 4

« ROBERT MCKEE

17. BIOGRAPHY. This cousin to Historical Drama focuses on a
person rather than an era. BIOGRAPHY, however, must
never become a simple chronicle. That someone lived, died,
and did interesting things in between is of scholarly
interest and no more. The biographer must interpret facts
as if they were fiction, find the meaning of the subject’s
life, and then cast him as the protagonist of his life’s genre:
YOUNG MR. LINCOLN defends the innocent in a Court¬
room Drama; GANDHI becomes the hero of a Modern
Epic; ISADORA succumbs to a Disillusionment Plot;
NIXON suffers in a Punitive Plot.

These caveats apply equally to the subgenre
Autobiography. This idiom is popular with filmmakers
who feel that they should write a film about a subject they
know. And rightly so. But autobiographical films often lack
the very virtue they promise: self-knowledge. For while it’s
true that the unexamined life is not worth living, it’s also
the case that the unlived life isn’t worth examining. BIG
WEDNESDAY, for example.

18. DOCU-DRAMA. A second cousin to Historical Drama,
DOCU-DRAMA centers on recent rather than past events.
Once invigorated by cinema verite—BATTLE OF
ALGIERS—it’s become a popular TV genre, sometimes
powerful, but often with little documentary value.

19. MOCKUMENTARY. This genre pretends to be rooted in
actuality or memory, behaves like documentary or
autobiography, but is utter fiction. It subverts fact-based
filmmaking to satirize hypocritical institutions: the
backstage world of rock ’n’ roll in THIS IS SPINAL TAP;
the Catholic Church in ROMA; middle-class mores in
ZELIG; TV journalism in MAN BITES DOG; politics in
BOB ROBERTS; crass American values in TO DIE FOR.

20. MUSICAL. Descended from opera, this genre presents a
“reality” in which characters sing and dance their stories.
It’s often a Love Story, but it can be Film Noir: the stage
adaptation of SUNSET BOULEVARD; Social Drama:

STRUCTURE AND GENRE + 85

WEST SIDE STORY; Punitive Plot: ALL THAT JAZZ;
Biography: EVITA. Indeed, any genre can work in musical
form and all can be satirized in Musical Comedy.

21. SCIENCE FICTION. In hypothetical futures that are typically
technological dystopias of tyranny and chaos, the SCIENCE
FICTION writer often marries the man-against-state
Modern Epic with Action/Adventure: the STAR WARS
trilogy and TOTAL RECALL. But, like history, the future is
a setting in which any genre may play. In SOLARIS, for
example, Andrei Tarkovsky used sci-fi to act out the inner
conflicts of a Disillusionment Plot.

22. SPORTS GENRE. Sport is a crucible for character change.
This genre is a natural home for the Maturation Plot:
NORTH DALLAS FORTY; the Redemption Plot: SOME¬
BODY UP THERE LIKES ME; the Education Plot: BULL
DURHAM; the Punitive Plot: RAGING BULL; the Testing
Plot: CHARIOTS OF FIRE; the Disillusionment Plot: THE
LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER;
Buddy Salvation: WHITE MEN CAN T JUMP; Social
Drama: A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN.

23. FANTASY. Here the writer plays with time, space, and the
physical, bending and mixing the laws of nature and the
supernatural. The extra-realities of FANTASY attract the
Action genres but also welcome others such as the Love
Story: SOMEWHERE IN TIME; Political Drama/

Allegory: ANIMAL FARM; Social Drama: IF ... ;
Maturation Plot: ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

24. ANIMATION. Here the law of universal metamorphism
rules: Anything can become something else. Like Fantasy
and Science Fiction, ANIMATION leans toward the Action
genres of cartoon Farce: BUGS BUNNY; or High
Adventure: THE SWORD IN THE STONE, THE YELLOW
SUBMARINE; and because the youth audience is its natural
market, many Maturation Plots: THE LION KING, THE
LITTLE MERMAID; but as the animators of Eastern Europe
and Japan have shown, there are no restraints.

86 + ROBERT MCKEE

Lastly, for those who believe that genres and their conventions
are concerns of “commercial” writers only, and that serious art is
nongeneric, let me add one last name to the list:

25. ART FILM. The avant-garde notion of writing outside the
genres is naive. No one writes in a vacuum. After thousands
of years of storytelling no story is so different that it has no
similarity to anything else ever written. The ART FILM has
become a traditional genre, divisible into two subgenres,
Minimalism and Antistructure, each with its own complex
of formal conventions of structure and cosmology. Like
Historical Drama, the ART FILM is a supra-genre that
embraces other basic genres: Love Story, Political Drama,
and the like.

Although this slate is reasonably comprehensive, no list can
ever be definitive or exhaustive because the lines between genres
often overlap as they influence and merge with one another.
Genres are not static or rigid, but evolving and flexible, yet firm
and stable enough to be identified and worked with, much as a
composer plays with the malleable movements of musical genres.

Each writer’s homework is first to identify his genre, then
research its governing practices. And there’s no escaping these
tasks. We’re all genre writers.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STRUCTURE
AND GENRE

Each genre imposes conventions on story design: conventional value-
charges at climax such as the down-ending of the Disillusionment
Plot; conventional settings such as the Western; conventional events
such as boy-meets-girl in the Love Story; conventional roles such as
the criminal in a Crime Story. The audience knows these conventions
and expects to see them fulfilled. Consequently, the choice of genre
sharply determines and limits what’s possible within a story, as its
design must envision the audience’s knowledge and anticipations.

STRUCTURE AND GENRE « 87

GENRE CONVENTIONS are specific settings, roles, events,
and values that define individual genres and their sub¬
genres.

Each genre has unique conventions, but in some these are rela¬
tively uncomplicated and pliable. The primary convention of the Disil¬
lusionment Plot is a protagonist who opens the story filled with
optimism, who holds high ideals or beliefs, whose view of life is posi¬
tive. Its second convention is a pattern of repeatedly negative story
turns that may at first raise his hopes, but ultimately poison his dreams
and values, leaving him deeply cynical and disillusioned. The protago¬
nist of THE CONVERSATION, for example, begins with an orderly,
secure hold on life and ends in a paranoid nightmare. This simple set
of conventions offers uncountable possibilities, for life knows a thou¬
sand paths to hopelessness. Among the many memorable films in this
genre are THE MISFITS, LA DOLCE VITA, and LENNY.

Other genres are relatively inflexible and filled with a complex
of rigid conventions. In the Crime Genre there must be a crime; it
must happen early in the telling. There must be a detective char¬
acter, professional or amateur, who discovers clues and suspects.
In the Thriller the criminal must “make it personal.” Although the
story may start with a cop who works for a paycheck, to deepen the
drama, at some point, the criminal goes over the line. Cliches grow
like fungus around this convention: The criminal menaces the
family of the cop or turns the cop himself into a suspect; or, cliche
of cliches with roots back to THE MALTESE FALCON, he kills the
detective's partner. Ultimately, the cop must identify, apprehend,
and punish the criminal.

Comedy contains myriad subgenres as well, each with its own
conventions, but one overriding convention unites this mega-genre
and distinguishes it from drama: Nobody gets hurt. In Comedy, the
audience must feel that no matter how characters bounce off walls,
no matter how they scream and writhe under the whips of life, it
doesn't really hurt. Buildings may fall on Laurel and Hardy, but
they get up out of the rubble, dust themselves off, mutter, “Now,
what a fine mess . . .” and on they go.

88 4 ROBERT MCKEE

In A FISH CALLED WANDA Ken (Michael Palin), a character
with an obsessive love of animals, tries to kill an old lady but acci¬
dentally kills her pet terriers instead. The last dog dies under a mas¬
sive construction block with his little paw left sticking out. Charles
Crichton, the director, shot two versions of this moment: one
showing only the paw, but for the second he sent to a butcher's shop
for a bag of entrails and added a trail of gore draining away from the
squashed terrier. When this gory image flashed in front of preview
audiences, the theatre fell dead quiet. The blood and guts said: “It
hurt.” For general release Crichton switched to the sanitized shot
and got his laugh. By genre convention, the comedy writer walks the
line between putting characters through the torments of hell while
safely reassuring the audience that the flames don’t really bum.

Across that line waits the subgenre of Black Comedy. Here the
writer bends comic convention and allows his audience to feel sharp,
but not unbearable, pain: THE LOVED ONE, THE WAR OF THE
ROSES, PRIZZI’S HONOR—films in which laughter often chokes us.

Art Films are conventionalized by a number of external prac¬
tices such as the absence of stars (or stars’ salaries), production out¬
side the Hollywood system, generally in a language other than
English—all of which become sales points as the marketing team
encourages critics to champion the film as an underdog. Its pri¬
mary internal conventions are, first, a celebration of the cerebral.
The Art Film favors the intellect by smothering strong emotion
under a blanket of mood, while through enigma, symbolism, or
unresolved tensions it invites interpretation and analysis in the
postfilm ritual of cafe criticism. Secondly and essentially, the story
design of an Art Film depends on one grand convention: unconven¬
tionality. Minimalist and/or Antistructure unconventionality is the
Art Film’s distinguishing convention.

Success in the Art Film genre usually results in instant, though
often temporary, recognition as an artist. On the other hand, the
durable Alfred Hitchcock worked solely within the Archplot and
genre convention, always aimed for a mass audience, and habitu¬
ally found it. Yet today he stands atop the pantheon of filmmakers,
worshipped worldwide as one of the century’s major artists, a film

STRUCTURE AND GENRE + 89

poet whose works resonate with sublime images of sexuality, reli¬
giosity, and subtleties of point of view. Hitchcock knew that there is
no necessary contradiction between art and popular success , nor a neces¬
sary connection between art and Art Film.

MASTERY OF GENRE

Each of us owes an enormous debt to the great story traditions. You
must not only respect but master your genre and its conventions.
Never assume that because you’ve seen films in your genre you
know it. This is like assuming you could compose a symphony
because you have heard all nine of Beethoven’s. You must study
the form. Books of genre criticism may help, but few are current
and none is complete. Read everything, nonetheless, for we need
all possible help from wherever we can get it. The most valuable
insights, however, come from self-discovery; nothing ignites the
imagination like the unearthing of buried treasure.

Genre study is best done in this fashion: First, list all those works
you feel are like yours, both successes and failures. (The study of fail¬
ures is illuminating .. . and humbling.) Next, rent the films on video
and purchase the screenplays if possible. Then study the films stop
and go, turning pages with the screen, breaking each film down into
elements of setting, role, event, and value. Lastly, stack, so to speak,
these analyses one atop the other and look down through them all
asking: What do the stories in my genre always do? What are its con¬
ventions of time, place, character, and action? Until you discover
answers, the audience will always be ahead of you.

To anticipate the anticipations of the audience you must

master your genre and its conventions.

If a film has been properly promoted, the audience arrives
filled with expectancy. In the jargon of marketing pros, it’s been
“positioned.” “Positioning the audience” means this: We don’t
want people coming to our work cold and vague, not knowing what
to expect, forcing us to spend the first twenty minutes of screen-

90 + ROBERT MCKEE

time clueing them toward the necessary story attitude. We want
them to settle into their seats, warm and focused with an appetite
we intend to satisfy.

Positioning of the audience is nothing new. Shakespeare didn't
call his play Hamlet; he called it The Tragedy of Hamlet , Prince of Den¬
mark. He gave comedies titles such as Much Ado About Nothing and
All's Well That Ends Well , so that each afternoon at the Globe Theatre
his Elizabethan audience was psychologically set to cry or laugh.

Skillful marketing creates genre expectation. From the title to
the poster through print and TV ads, promotion seeks to fix the
type of story in the mind of the audience. Having told our film-
goers to expect a favorite form, we must deliver as promised. If we
botch genre by omitting or misusing conventions, the audience
knows instantly and badmouths our work.

For example, the marketing of the unfortunately titled MIKE'S
MURDER (USA/1984) positioned the audience to a Murder
Mystery. The film, however, is in another genre, and for over an
hour the audience sat wondering, “Who the hell dies in this
movie?” The screenplay is a fresh take on the Maturation Plot as it
arcs Debra Winger's bank teller from dependency and immaturity
to self-possession and maturity. But the sour word-of-mouth of a
mispositioned and confused audience cut the “legs” out from
under an otherwise good film.

CREATIVE LIMITATIONS

Robert Frost said that writing free verse is like playing tennis with
the net down, for it’s the self-imposed, indeed artificial demands of
poetic conventions that stir the imagination. Let's say a poet arbi¬
trarily imposes this limit: He decides to write in six-line stanzas,
rhyming every other line. After rhyming the fourth line with the
second line he reaches the end of a stanza. Backed into this corner,
his struggle to rhyme the sixth line with the fourth and second may
inspire him to imagine a word that has no relationship to his poem
whatsoever—it just happens to rhyme—but this random word
then springs loose a phrase that in turn brings an image to mind,

STRUCTURE AND GENRE 4 91

an image that in turn resonates back through the first five lines,
triggering a whole new sense and feeling, twisting and driving the
poem to a richer meaning and emotion. Thanks to the poet’s Cre¬
ative Limitation of this rhyme scheme, the poem achieves an inten¬
sity it would have lacked had the poet allowed himself the freedom
to choose any word he wished.

The principle of Creative Limitation calls for freedom within a
circle of obstacles. Talent is like a muscle: without something to
push against, it atrophies. So we deliberately put rocks in our path,
barriers that inspire. We discipline ourselves as to what to do, while
we’re boundless as to how to do it. One of our first steps, therefore,
is to identify the genre or combination of genres that govern our
work, for the stony ground that grows the most fruitful ideas is
genre convention.

Genre conventions are the rhyme scheme of a storyteller’s
“poem.” They do not inhibit creativity, they inspire it. The chal¬
lenge is to keep convention but avoid cliche. That boy meets girl in
a Love Story is not a cliche but a necessary element of form—a con¬
vention. The cliche is that they meet as Love Story lovers have
always met: Two dynamic individualists are forced to share an
adventure and seem to hate each other on sight; or two shy souls,
each carrying the torch for someone who won’t give them the time
of day, find themselves shunted to the edge of a party with no one
else to talk to, and so on.

Genre convention is a Creative Limitation that forces the writer’s
imagination to rise to the occasion. Rather than deny convention
and flatten the story, the fine writer calls on conventions like old
friends, knowing that in the struggle to fulfill them in a unique way,
he may find inspiration for the scene that will lift his story above the
ordinary. With mastery of genre we can guide audiences through
rich, creative variations on convention to reshape and exceed expec¬
tations by giving the audience not only what it had hoped for but, if
we’re very good, more than it could have imagined.

Consider Action/Adventure. Often dismissed as mindless fare,
it is in fact the single most difficult genre in which to write today
. . . simply because it’s been done to death. What is an Action writer

92 « ROBERT MCKEE

to do that the audience hasn't seen a thousand times before? For
example, chief among its many conventions is this scene: The hero
is at the mercy of the villain. The hero, from a position of helpless¬
ness, must turn the tables on the villain. This scene is imperative.
It tests and expresses in absolute terms the protagonist’s ingenuity,
strength of will, and cool under pressure. Without it both the pro¬
tagonist and his story are diminished; the audience leaves dissatis¬
fied. Cliches grow on this convention like mold on bread, but when
its solution is fresh, the telling is much enhanced.

In RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, Indiana Jones comes face to
face with an Egyptian giant wielding a massive scimitar. A look of
terror, then a shrug and a quick bullet as Jones remembers he is
carrying a gun. The behind-the-screen legend is that Harrison Ford
suggested this much-loved solution because he was too sick with
dysentery to take on the acrobatic fight Lawrence Kasdan had
scripted.

DIE HARD climaxes around this graceful execution of the con¬
vention: John McClane (Bruce Willis), stripped to the waist,
weaponless, his hands in the air, is face to face with the sadistic
and well-armed Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman). Slowly, however, as
the camera tracks around McClane we discover that he’s duct-taped
a gun to his naked back. He distracts Gruber with a joke, snatches
the gun from his back, and kills him.

Of all the hero-at-the-mercy-of-the-villain cliches, “Look out!
There's somebody behind you!” is the most archaic. But in MID¬
NIGHT RUN screenwriter George Gallo gave it new life and
delight by riffmg lunatic variations in scene after scene.

MIXING GENRES

Genres are frequently combined to resonate with meaning, to
enrich character, and to create varieties of mood and emotion. A
Love Story subplot, for example, finds its way inside almost any
Crime Story. THE FISHER KING wove five threads— Redemption
Plot, Psycho-Drama , Love Story , Social Drama, Comedy —into an
excellent film. The Musical Horror Film was a delicious invention.
Given over two dozen principal genres, possibilities for inventive

STRUCTURE AND GENRE + 93

cross-breeding are endless. In this way the writer in command of
genre may create a type of film the world has never seen.

REINVENTING GENRES

Equally, mastery of genre keeps the screenwriter contemporary. For
the genre conventions are not carved in stone; they evolve, grow,
adapt, modify, and break apace with the changes in society. Society
changes slowly, but it does change, and as society enters each new
phase, the genres transform with it. For genres are simply windows
on reality, various ways for the writer to look at life. When the reality
outside the window undergoes change, the genres alter with it. If not,
if a genre becomes inflexible and cannot bend with the changing
world, it petrifies. Below are three examples of genre evolution.

The Western

The Western began as morality plays set in the “Old West,” a mythical
golden age for allegories of good versus evil. But in the cynical atmos¬
phere of the 1970s the genre became dated and stale. When Mel
Brooks's BLAZING SADDLES exposed the Western’s fascist heart, the
genre went into virtual hibernation for twenty years before making a
comeback by altering its conventions. In the 1980s the Western modu¬
lated into quasi- Social Drama , a corrective to racism and violence:
DANCES WITH WOLVES, UNFORGIVEN, POSSE.

The Psycho-Drama

Clinical insanity was first dramatized in the UFA silent THE CAB¬
INET OF DR. CALIGARI (Germany/1919). As psychoanalysis grew
in reputation, Psycho-Drama developed as a kind of a Freudian
detective story. In its first stage, a psychiatrist played “detective” to
investigate a hidden “crime,” a deeply repressed trauma his patient
has suffered in the past. Once the psychiatrist exposed this “crime,”
the victim was either restored to sanity or took a major step toward
it: SYBIL, THE SNAKE PIT, THE THREE FACES OF EVE, I

94 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN, THE MARK, DAVID
AND LISA, EQUUS.

However, as the serial killer began to haunt society’s night¬
mares, genre evolution took Psycho-Drama to its second stage,
merging it with the Detective Genre into the subgenre known as the
Psycho-Thriller. In these cops became lay psychiatrists to hunt down
psychopaths, and apprehension hinged on the detective’s psycho¬
analysis of the madman: THE FIRST DEADLY SIN, MAN-
HUNTER, COP, and, recently, SEVEN.

In the 1980s the Psycho-Thriller evolved a third time. In films
such as TIGHTROPE, LETHAL WEAPON, ANGEL HEART, and
THE MORNING AFTER, the detective himself became the psycho,
suffering from a wide variety of modern maladies—sexual obses¬
sion, suicidal impulse, traumatic amnesia, alcoholism. In these
films the key to justice became the cop’s psychoanalysis of himself.
Once the detective came to terms with his inner demons, appre¬
hending the criminal was almost an afterthought.

This evolution was a telling statement about our changing
society. Gone was the day when we could comfort ourselves with
the notion that all the crazy people were locked up, while we sane
people were safely outside the asylum walls. Few of us are so naive
today. We know that, given a certain conjunction of events, we too
could part company with reality. These Psycho-Thrillers spoke to this
threat, to our realization that our toughest task in life is self-
analysis as we try to fathom our humanity and bring peace to the
wars within.

By 1990 the genre reached its fourth stage by relocating the
psychopath once again, now placing him in your spouse, psychia¬
trist, surgeon, child, nanny, roommate, neighborhood cop. These
films tap communal paranoia, as we discover that the people most
intimate in our lives, people we must trust, those we hope will pro¬
tect us, are maniacs: THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE,
SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY, FORCED ENTRY, WHISPERS
IN THE DARK, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, and THE GOOD SON.
Most telling of all perhaps is DEAD RINGERS, a film about the
ultimate fear: the fear of the person closest to you—yourself.

STRUCTURE AND GENRE + 95

What horror will crawl up from your unconscious to steal your
sanity?

The Love Story

The most important question we ask when writing a Love Story is:
“What's to stop them?” For where’s the story in a Love Story ? Two
people meet, fall in love, marry, raise a family, support each other
till death do them part . . . what could be more boring than that?
So, for over two thousand years, since the Greek dramatist
Menander, writers answered the question with “the parents of the
girl.” Her parents find the young man unsuitable and become the
convention known as Blocking Characters or “the force opposed to
love.” Shakespeare expanded it to both sets of parents in Romeo and
Juliet. From 2300 b.c. this essential convention went unchanged
. . . until the twentieth century launched the romantic revolution.

The twentieth century has been an Age of Romance like no
other. The idea of romantic love (with sex as its implicit partner)
dominates popular music, advertising, and Western culture in gen¬
eral. Over the decades, the automobile, telephone, and a thousand
other liberating factors have given young lovers greater and greater
freedom from parental control. Meanwhile, parents, thanks to the
rampant rise in adultery, divorce, and remarriage, have extended
romance from a youthful fling to a lifelong pursuit. It’s always
been the case that young people don’t listen to their parents, but
today, if a movie Mom and Dad were to object, and the teenage
lovers were actually to obey them, the audience would blister the
screen with jeers. So, as the-parents-of-the-girl convention faded
along with arranged marriages, resourceful writers unearthed a
new and amazing array of forces that oppose love.

In THE GRADUATE the Blocking Characters were the conven¬
tional parents of the girl but for a very unconventional reason. In
WITNESS the force that opposes love is her culture—she’s Amish,
virtually from another world. In MRS. SOFFEL, Mel Gibson plays
an imprisoned murderer condemned to hang and Diane Keaton is
the wife of the prison’s warden. What is to stop them? All mem-

96 4 ROBERT MCKEE

bers of “right-thinking” society. In WHEN HARRY MET SALLY,
the lovers suffer from the absurd belief that friendship and love are
incompatible. In LONE STAR, the blocking force is racism; in THE
CRYING GAME, sexual identity; in GHOST, death.

The enthusiasm for romance that opened this century has
turned at its close to deep malaise that brings with it a dark, skep¬
tical attitude toward love. In response, we've seen the rise and sur¬
prising popularity of down-endings: DANGEROUS LIAISONS,
THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, THE REMAINS OF
THE DAY, HUSBANDS AND WIVES. In LEAVING LAS VEGAS,
Ben’s a suicidal alcoholic, Sera’s a masochistic prostitute, and their
love is “star-crossed.” These films speak to a growing sense of the
hopelessness, if not impossibility, of a lasting love.

To achieve an up-ending some recent films have retooled the
genre into the Longing Story. Boy-meets-girl has always been an
irreducible convention that occurs early in the telling, to be fol¬
lowed by the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of love. But SLEEP¬
LESS IN SEATTLE and RED end on boy-meets-girl. The audience
waits to see how the lovers’ “fate” will be shaped in the hands of
chance. By cleverly delaying the lovers’ meeting to climax, these
films avoid the prickly issues of modern love by replacing the diffi¬
culty of love with the difficulty of meeting. These aren’t love stories
but stories of longing, as talk about and desire for love fills the
scenes, leaving genuine acts of love and their often troubling con¬
sequences to happen in an offscreen future. It may be that the
twentieth century gave birth to, then buried, the Age of Romance.

The lesson is this: Social attitudes change. The cultural antenna
of the writer must be alert to these movements or risk writing an
antique. For example: In FALLING IN LOVE the force that opposes
love is that the lovers are each married to someone else. The only
tears in the audience came from yawning too hard. One could
almost hear their thoughts screaming, “What’s your problem?
You’re married to stiffs. Dump them. Does the word ‘divorce’
mean anything to you people?”

Through the 1950s, however, a love affair across marriages was
seen as a painful betrayal. Many poignant films—STRANGERS

STRUCTURE AND GENRE + 97

WHEN WE MEET, BRIEF ENCOUNTER—drew their energy from
society's antagonism to adultery. But by the 1980s attitudes had
shifted, giving rise to the feeling that romance is so precious and
life so short, if two married people want to have an affair, let them.
Right or wrong, that was the temperament of the time, so that a
film with antiquated 1950s values brutally bored the 1980s audi¬
ence. The audience wants to know how it feels to be alive on the
knife edge of the now. What does it mean to be a human being
today?

Innovative writers are not only contemporary, they are
visionary. They have their ear to the wall of history, and as things
change, they can sense the way society is leaning toward the future.
They then produce works that break convention and take the
genres into their next generation.

This, for example, is one of the many beauties of CHINA¬
TOWN. In the climax of all previous Murder Mysteries the detective
apprehends and punishes the criminal, but CHINATOWN’S
wealthy and politically powerful killer gets away with it, breaking
an honored convention. This film could not have been made, how¬
ever, until the 1970s when the civil rights movement, Watergate,
and the Vietnam War woke America up to the depth of its corrup¬
tion and the nation realized that indeed the rich were getting away
with murder . . . and much more. CHINATOWN rewrote the
genre, opening the door to down-ending crime stories such as
BODY HEAT, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, Q & A, BASIC
INSTINCT, THE LAST SEDUCTION, and SEVEN.

The finest writers are not only visionary, they create classics.
Each genre involves crucial human values: love/hate, peace/war,
justice/injustice, achievement/failure, good/evil, and the like. Each
of these values is an ageless theme that has inspired great writing
since the dawn of story. From year to year these values must be
reworked to keep them alive and meaningful for the contemporary
audience. Yet the greatest stories are always contemporary. They
are classics. A classic is reexperienced with pleasure because it can
be reinterpreted through the decades, because in it truth and
humanity are so abundant that each new generation finds itself

98 4 ROBERT MCKEE

mirrored in the story. CHINATOWN is such a work. With an
absolute command of genre Towne and Polanski took their talents
to a height few have reached before or since.

THE GIFT OF ENDURANCE

Mastery of genre is essential for yet one more reason: Screen¬
writing is not for sprinters, but for long-distance runners. No
matter what you’ve heard about scripts dashed off over a weekend
at poolside, from first inspiration to last polished draft, a quality
screenplay consumes six months, nine months, a year, or more.
Writing a film demands the same creative labor in terms of world,
character, and story as a four-hundred-page novel. The only sub¬
stantive difference is the number of words used in the telling. A
screenplay’s painstaking economy of language demands sweat and
time, while the freedom to fill pages with prose often makes the
task easier, even faster. All writing is discipline, but screenwriting
is a drill sergeant. Ask yourself, therefore, what will keep your
desire burning over those many months?

Generally, great writers are not eclectic. Each tightly focuses his
oeuvre on one idea, a single subject that ignites his passion, a sub¬
ject he pursues with beautiful variation through a lifetime of work.
Hemingway, for example, was fascinated with the question of how
to face death. After he witnessed the suicide of his father, it became
the central theme, not only of his writing, but of his life. He chased
death in war, in sport, on safari, until finally, putting a shotgun in
his mouth, he found it. Charles Dickens, whose father was impris¬
oned for debt, wrote of the lonely child searching for the lost father
over and over in David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and Great Expecta¬
tions. Moliere turned a critical eye on the idiocy and depravity of
seventeenth-century France and made a career writing plays whose
titles read like a checklist of human vices: The Miser, The Misan¬
thrope, The Hypochondriac. Each of these authors found his subject
and it sustained him over the long journey of the writer.

What is yours? Do you, like Hemingway and Dickens, work
directly from the life you’ve lived? Or, like Moliere, do you write

STRUCTURE AND GENRE + 99

about your ideas of society and human nature? Whatever your
source of inspiration, beware of this: Long before you finish, the
love of self will rot and die, the love of ideas sicken and perish.
You’ll become so tired and bored with writing about yourself or
your ideas, you may not finish the race.

So, in addition, ask: What’s my favorite genre? Then write in
the genre you love. For although the passion for an idea or experi¬
ence may wither, the love of the movies is forever. Genre should be
a constant source of reinspiration. Every time you reread your
script, it should excite you, for this is your kind of story, the kind of
film you'd stand in line in the rain to see. Do not write something
because intellectual friends think it’s socially important. Do not
write something you think will inspire critical praise in Film Quar¬
terly. Be honest in your choice of genre, for of all the reasons for
wanting to write, the only one that nurtures us through time is love
of the work itself.

STRUCTURE
AND CHARACTER

Plot or character? Which is more important? This debate is as old
as the art. Aristotle weighed each side and concluded that story is
primary, character secondary. His view held sway until, with the
evolution of the novel, the pendulum of opinion swung the other
way. By the nineteenth century many held that structure is merely
an appliance designed to display personality, that what the reader
wants is fascinating, complex characters. Today both sides continue
the debate without a verdict. The reason for the hung jury is
simple: The argument is specious.

We cannot ask which is more important, structure or character,
because structure is character; character is structure. They’re the
same thing, and therefore one cannot be more important than the
other. Yet the argument goes on because of a widely held confusion
over two crucial aspects of the fictional role—the difference
between Character and Characterization.

CHARACTER VERSUS CHARACTERIZATION

Characterization is the sum of all observable qualities of a human
being, everything knowable through careful scrutiny: age and IQ; sex
and sexuality; style of speech and gesture; choices of home, car, and
dress; education and occupation; personality and nervosity; values
and attitudes—all aspects of humanity we could know by taking
notes on someone day in and day out. The totality of these traits

STRUCTURE AND CHARACTER 4 IOI

makes each person unique because each of us is a one-of-a-kind com¬
bination of genetic givens and accumulated experience. This singular
assemblage of traits is characterization .. . but it is not character.

TRUE CHARACTER is revealed in the choices a human
being makes under pressure—the greater the pressure,
the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the
character's essential nature.

Beneath the surface of characterization, regardless of appear¬
ances, who is this person? At the heart of his humanity, what will
we find? Is he loving or cruel? Generous or selfish? Strong or
weak? Truthful or a liar? Courageous or cowardly? The only way to
know the truth is to witness him make choices under pressure to
take one action or another in the pursuit of his desire. As he
chooses, he is.

Pressure is essential. Choices made when nothing is at risk
mean little. If a character chooses to tell the truth in a situation
where telling a lie would gain him nothing, the choice is trivial, the
moment expresses nothing. But if the same character insists on
telling the truth when a lie would save his life, then we sense that
honesty is at the core of his nature.

Consider this scene: Two cars motor down a highway. One is a
rusted-out station wagon with buckets, mops, and brooms in the
back. Driving it is an illegal alien—a quiet, shy woman working as
a domestic for under-the-table cash, sole support of her family.
Alongside her is a glistening new Porsche driven by a brilliant and
wealthy neurosurgeon. Two people who have utterly different back¬
grounds, beliefs, personalities, languages—in every way imagin¬
able their characterizations are the opposite of each other.

Suddenly, in front of them, a school bus full of children flips
out of control, smashes against an underpass, bursting into flames,
trapping the children inside. Now, under this terrible pressure,
we’ll find out who these two people really are.

Who chooses to stop? Who chooses to drive by? Each has ratio¬
nalizations for driving by. The domestic worries that if she gets

102 + ROBERT MCKEE

caught up in this, the police might question her, find out she’s an
illegal, throw her back across the border, and her family will starve.
The surgeon fears that if he’s injured and his hands burned, hands
that perform miraculous microsurgeries, the lives of thousands of
future patients will be lost. But let’s say they both hit the brakes
and stop.

This choice gives us a clue to character, but who’s stopping to
help, and who’s become too hysterical to drive any farther? Let’s say
they both choose to help. This tells us more. But who chooses to
help by calling for an ambulance and waiting? Who chooses to help
by dashing into the burning bus? Let’s say they both rush for the
bus—a choice that reveals character in even greater depth.

Now doctor and housekeeper smash windows, crawl inside the
blazing bus, grab screaming children, and push them to safety. But
their choices aren’t over. Soon the flames surge into a blistering
inferno, skin peels from their faces. They can’t take another breath
without searing their lungs. In the midst of this horror each real¬
izes there's only a second left to rescue one of the many children
still inside. How does the doctor react? In a sudden reflex does he
reach for a white child or the black child closer to him? Which way
do the housekeeper’s instincts take her? Does she save the little
boy? Or the little girl cowering at her feet? How does she make
“Sophie’s choice”?

We may discover that deep within these utterly different char¬
acterizations is an identical humanity—both willing to give their
lives in a heartbeat for strangers. Or it may turn out that the person
we thought would act heroically is a coward. Or the one we thought
would act cowardly is a hero. Or at rock bottom, we may discover
that selfless heroism is not the limit of true character in either of
them. For the unseen power of their acculturation may force each
to a spontaneous choice that exposes unconscious prejudices of
gender or ethnicity . . . even while they are performing acts of
saintlike courage. Whichever way the scene’s written, choice under
pressure will strip away the mask of characterization, we’ll peer
into their inner natures and with a flash of insight grasp their true
characters.

STRUCTURE AND CHARACTER + 103

CHARACTER REVELATION

The revelation of true character in contrast or contradiction to char¬
acterization is fundamental to all fine storytelling. Life teaches this
grand principle: What seems is not what is. People are not what they
appear to be. A hidden nature waits concealed behind a facade of
traits. No matter what they say, no matter how they comport them¬
selves, the only way we ever come to know characters in depth is
through their choices under pressure.

If we're introduced to a character whose demeanor is “loving
husband,” and by the end of the tale he's still what he first
appeared to be, a loving husband with no secrets, no unfulfilled
dreams, no hidden passions, we’ll be very disappointed. When
characterization and true character match, when inner life and
outer appearance are, like a block of cement, of one substance, the
role becomes a list of repetitious, predictable behaviors. It's not as
if such a character isn’t credible. Shallow, nondimensional people
exist. . . but they are boring.

For example: What went wrong with Rambo? In FIRST
BLOOD he was a compelling character—a Vietnam burnout, a
loner hiking through the mountains, seeking solitude (characteri¬
zation). Then a sheriff, for no reason other than wickedly high
levels of testosterone, provoked him, and out came Rambo, a ruth¬
less and unstoppable killer (true character). But once Rambo came
out, he wouldn’t go back in. For the sequels, he strapped ban¬
doleers of bullets across his oiled, pumped muscles, coiffed his
locks with a red bandanna until super-hero characterization and
true character merged into a figure with less dimension than a Sat¬
urday morning cartoon.

Compare that flat pattern to fames Bond. Three seems to be the
limit on Rambos, but there have been nearly twenty Bond films.
Bond goes on and on because the world delights in the repeated reve¬
lation of a deep character that contradicts characterization. Bond
enjoys playing the lounge lizard: Dressed in a tuxedo, he graces posh
parties, a cocktail glass dangling from his fingertips as he chats up
beautiful women. But then story pressure builds and Bond’s choices

104 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

reveal that underneath his lounge lizard exterior is a thinking man's
Rambo. This expose of witty super-hero in contradiction to playboy
characterization has become a seemingly endless pleasure.

Taking the principle further: The revelation of deep character
in contrast or contradiction to characterization is fundamental in
major characters. Minor roles may or may not need hidden dimen¬
sions, but principals must be written in depth—they cannot be at
heart what they seem to be at face.

CHARACTER ARC

Taking the principle further yet: The finest writing not

only reveals true character, but arcs or changes that inner

nature, for better or worse, over the course of the telling.

In THE VERDICT, protagonist Frank Galvin first appears as a
Boston attorney, dressed in a three-piece suit and looking like Paul
Newman . . . unfairly handsome. David Mamet's screenplay then
peels back this characterization to reveal a corrupt, bankrupt, self¬
destructive, irretrievable drunk who hasn’t won a case for years.
Divorce and disgrace have broken his spirit. We see him searching
obituaries for people who have died in automobile or industrial acci¬
dents, then going to the funerals of these unfortunates to pass out his
business card to grieving relatives, hoping to drum up some insur¬
ance litigation. This sequence culminates in a rage of drunken self-
loathing as he trashes his office, rips the diplomas off the walls, and
smashes them before collapsing in a heap. But then comes the case.

He’s offered a medical malpractice suit to defend a woman lost
in a coma. With a quick settlement, he’d make seventy thousand
dollars. But as he looks at his client in her helpless state, he senses
that what this case offers is not a fat, easy fee, but his last chance
for salvation. He chooses to take on the Catholic Church and the
political establishment, fighting not only for his client but for his
own soul. With victory comes resurrection. The legal battle changes
him into a sober, ethical, and excellent attorney—the kind of man
he once was before he lost his will to live.

STRUCTURE AND CHARACTER + 105

This is the play between character and structure seen throughout
the history of fiction. First, the story lays out the protagonist’s charac¬
terization: Home from the university for the funeral of his father,
Hamlet is melancholy and confused, wishing he were dead: “Oh, that
this too too solid flesh would melt...”

Second, we’re soon led into the heart of the character. His true
nature is revealed as he chooses to take one action over another: The
ghost of Hamlet’s father claims he was murdered by Hamlet's uncle,
Claudius, who has now become king. Hamlet’s choices expose a
highly intelligent and cautious nature battling to restrain his rash,
passionate immaturity. He decides to seek revenge, but not until he
can prove the King’s guilt: “I will speak daggers . . . but use none.”

Third, this deep nature is at odds with the outer countenance of
the character, contrasting with it, if not contradicting it. We sense
that he is not what he appears to be. He’s not merely sad, sensitive,
and cautious. Other qualities wait hidden beneath his persona.
Hamlet: “I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is
southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

Fourth, having exposed the character’s inner nature, the story
puts greater and greater pressure on him to make more and more
difficult choices: Hamlet hunts for his father’s killer and finds him
on his knees in prayer. He could easily kill the King, but Hamlet
realizes that if Claudius dies in prayer, his soul might go to heaven.
So Hamlet forces himself to wait and kill Claudius when the King’s
soul is “as damned and black as Hell whereto it goes.”

Fifth, by the climax of the story, these choices have profoundly
changed the humanity of the character: Hamlet’s wars, known and
unknown, come to an end. He reaches a peaceful maturity as his
lively intelligence ripens into wisdom: “The rest is silence.”

STRUCTURE AND CHARACTER FUNCTIONS

The function of STRUCTURE is to provide progressively
building pressures that force characters into more and
more difficult dilemmas where they must make more
and more difficult risk-taking choices and actions, grad-

io6 4 ROBERT MCKEE

ually revealing their true natures, even down to the
unconscious self.

The function of CHARACTER is to bring to the story the
qualities of characterization necessary to convincingly
act out choices. Put simply, a character must be cred¬
ible: young enough or old enough, strong or weak,
worldly or naive, educated or ignorant, generous or
selfish, witty or dull, in the right proportions. Each
must bring to the story the combination of qualities
that allows an audience to believe that the character
could and would do what he does.

Structure and character are interlocked. The event structure of
a story is created out of the choices that characters make under
pressure and the actions they choose to take, while characters are
the creatures who are revealed and changed by how they choose to
act under pressure. If you change one, you change the other. If you
change event design, you have also changed character; if you
change deep character, you must reinvent the structure to express
the character's changed nature.

Suppose a story contains a pivotal event in which the protago¬
nist, at serious risk, chooses to tell the truth. But the writer feels
the first draft doesn't work. While studying this scene in the
rewrite, he decides that his character would lie and changes his
story design by reversing that action. From one draft to the next the
protagonist's characterization remains intact—he dresses the
same, works the same job, laughs at the same jokes. But in the first
draft he's an honest man. In the second, a liar. With the inversion
of an event the writer creates a wholly new character.

Suppose, on the other hand, the process takes this path: The
writer has a sudden insight into his protagonist’s nature, inspiring
him to sketch out a radically new psychological profile, trans¬
forming an honest man into a liar. To express a wholly changed
nature the writer will have to do far more than rework the char¬
acter’s traits. A dark sense of humor might add texture but would

STRUCTURE AND CHARACTER + 107

never be enough. If story stays the same, character stays the same.
If the writer reinvents character, he must reinvent story. A changed
character must make new choices, take different actions, and live
another story—his story. Whether our instincts work through char¬
acter or structure, they ultimately meet at the same place.

For this reason the phrase “character-driven story” is redun¬
dant. All stories are “character-driven.” Event design and character
design mirror each other. Character cannot be expressed in depth
except through the design of story.

The key is appropriateness.

The relative complexity of character must be adjusted to genre.
Action/Adventure and Farce demand simplicity of character because
complexity would distract us from the derring-do or pratfalls indis¬
pensable to those genres. Stories of personal and inner conflict,
such as Education and Redemption Plots, demand complexity of
character because simplicity would rob us of the insight into
human nature requisite to those genres. This is common sense. So
what does “character-driven” really mean? For too many writers it
means “characterization driven,” tissue-thin portraiture in which
the mask may be well drawn but deep character is left underdevel¬
oped and unexpressed.

CLIMAX AND CHARACTER

The interlock of structure and character seems neatly symmetrical
until we come to the problem of endings. A revered Hollywood
axiom warns: “Movies are about their last twenty minutes.” In
other words, for a film to have a chance in the world, the last act
and its climax must be the most satisfying experience of all. For no
matter what the first ninety minutes have achieved, if the final
movement fails, the film will die over its opening weekend.

Compare two films: For the first eighty minutes of BLIND
DATE Kim Basinger and Bruce Willis careened through this farce,
exploding laugh after laugh. But with the Act Two climax all
laughter ceased, Act Three fell flat, and what should have been a hit
went south. KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, on the other hand,

io8 * ROBERT MCKEE

opened with a tedious thirty or forty minutes, but gradually the
film drew us into deep involvement and built pace until the Story
Cimax moved us as few dramas do. Audiences who were bored at
eight o’clock were elated at ten o’clock. Word-of-mouth gave the
film legs; the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted
William Hurt an Oscar.

Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time. Film, there¬
fore, is temporal art, not plastic art. Our cousins are not the spacial
media of painting, sculpture, architecture, or still photography, but
the temporal forms of music, dance, poetry, and song. And the first
commandment of all temporal art is: Thou shalt save the best for
last. The final movement of a ballet, the coda of a symphony, the
couplet of a sonnet, the last act and its Story Climax—these culmi¬
nating moments must be the most gratifying, meaningful experi¬
ences of all.

A finished screenplay represents, obviously, ioo percent of its
author’s creative labor. The vast majority of this work, 75 percent or
more of our struggles, goes into designing the interlock of deep
character to the invention and arrangement of events. The writing
of dialogue and description consumes what’s left. And of the over¬
whelming effort that goes into designing story, 75 percent of that is
focused on creating the climax of the last act. The story’s ultimate
event is the writer’s ultimate task.

Gene Fowler once said that writing is easy, just a matter of
staring at the blank page until your forehead bleeds. And if any¬
thing will draw blood from your forehead, it’s creating the climax
of the last act—the pinnacle and concentration of all meaning and
emotion, the fulfillment for which all else is preparation, the deci¬
sive center of audience satisfaction. If this scene fails, the story
fails. Until you have created it, you don’t have a story. If you fail to
make the poetic leap to a brilliant culminating climax, all previous
scenes, characters, dialogue, and description become an elaborate
typing exercise.

Suppose you were to wake up one morning with the inspiration
to write this Story Climax: “Hero and villain pursue each other on
foot for three days and three nights across the Mojave Desert. On

STRUCTURE AND CHARACTER + 109

the brink of dehydration, exhaustion, and delirium, a hundred
miles from the nearest water, they fight it out and one kills the
other.” It’s thrilling . . . until you look back at your protagonist and
remember that he’s a seventy-five-year-old retired accountant, hob¬
bled on crutches and allergic to dust. He’d turn your tragic climax
into a joke. What’s worse, your agent tells you Walter Matthau
wants to play him as soon as you get the ending sorted out. What
do you do?

Find the page where the protagonist is introduced, on it locate
the phrase of description that reads “Jake (75)”, then delete 7, insert 3.
In other words, rework characterization. Deep character remains
unchanged because whether Jake is thirty-five or seventy-five, he still
has the will and tenacity to go to the limit in the Mojave. But you
must make him credible.

In 1924 Erich von Stroheim made GREED. Its climax plays out
over three days and three nights, hero and villain, across the
Mojave Desert. Von Stroheim shot this sequence in the Mojave in
high summer with temperatures rising to over 130 degrees Fahren¬
heit. He almost killed his cast and crew, but he got what he wanted:
a white-on-white landscape of vast salt wastes extending to the
horizon. Under the scorching sun, hero and villain, skin cracked
and parched like the desert floor, grapple. In the struggle the villain
grabs a rock and smashes in the skull of the hero. But as the hero
dies, in his last moment of consciousness, he manages to reach up
and handcuff himself to his killer. In the final image the villain col¬
lapses in the dust chained to the corpse he just killed.

GREED’S brilliant ending is created out of ultimate choices that
profoundly delineate its characters. Any aspect of characterization
that undermines the credibility of such an action must be sacrificed.
Plot, as Aristotle noted, is more important than characterization, but
story structure and true character are one phenomenon seen from
two points of view. The choices that characters make from behind
their outer masks simultaneously shape their inner natures and
propel the story. From Oedipus Rex to Falstaff, from Anna Karenina
to Lord Jim, from Zorba the Greek to Thelma and Louise, this is the
character/structure dynamic of consummate storytelling.

STRUCTURE AND MEANING

AESTHETIC EMOTION

Aristotle approached the question of story and meaning in this
way: Why is it, he asked, when we see a dead body in the street we
have one reaction, but when we read of death in Homer, or see it in
the theatre, we have another? Because in life idea and emotion
come separately. Mind and passions revolve in different spheres of
our humanity, rarely coordinated, usually at odds.

In life, if you see a dead body in the street, you’re struck by a
rush of adrenaline: “My God, he's dead!” Perhaps you drive away
in fear. Later, in the coolness of time, you may reflect on the
meaning of this stranger’s demise, on your own mortality, on life
in the shadow of death. This contemplation may change you
within so that the next time you are confronted with death, you
have a new, perhaps more compassionate reaction. Or, reversing
the pattern, you may, in youth, think deeply but not wisely about
love, embracing an idealistic vision that trips you into a poignant
but very painful romance. This may harden the heart, creating a
cynic who in later years finds bitter what the young still think
sweet.

Your intellectual life prepares you for emotional experiences
that then urge you toward fresh perceptions that in turn remix the
chemistry of new encounters. The two realms influence each other,
but first one, then the other. In fact, in life, moments that blaze
with a fusion of idea and emotion are so rare, when they happen

STRUCTURE AND MEANING « III

you think you’re having a religious experience. But whereas life
separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an
instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phe¬
nomenon known as aesthetic emotion.

The source of all art is the human psyche’s primal, prelin-
guistic need for the resolution of stress and discord through beauty
and harmony, for the use of creativity to revive a life deadened by
routine, for a link to reality through our instinctive, sensory feel for
the truth. Like music and dance, painting and sculpture, poetry and
song, story is first, last, and always the experience of aesthetic emo¬
tion—the simultaneous encounter of thought and feeling.

When an idea wraps itself around an emotional charge, it
becomes all the more powerful, all the more profound, all the more
memorable. You might forget the day you saw a dead body in the
street, but the death of Hamlet haunts you forever. Life on its own,
without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but aes¬
thetic emotion harmonizes what you know with what you feel to
give you a heightened awareness and a sureness of your place in
reality. In short, a story well told gives you the very thing you
cannot get from life: meaningful emotional experience. In life,
experiences become meaningful with reflection in time. In art, they
are meaningful now, at the instant they happen.

In this sense, story is, at heart, nonintellectual. It does not
express ideas in the dry, intellectual arguments of an essay. But this
is not to say story is anti-intellectual. We pray that the writer has
ideas of import and insight. Rather, the exchange between artist and
audience expresses idea directly through the senses and percep¬
tions, intuition and emotion. It requires no mediator, no critic to
rationalize the transaction, to replace the ineffable and the sentient
with explanation and abstraction. Scholarly acumen sharpens taste
and judgment, but we must never mistake criticism for art. Intellec¬
tual analysis, however heady, will not nourish the soul.

A well-told story neither expresses the clockwork reasonings of a
thesis nor vents raging inchoate emotions. It triumphs in the mar¬
riage of the rational with the irrational. For a work that’s either essen¬
tially emotional or essentially intellectual cannot have the validity of

112 4 ROBERT MCKEE

one that calls upon our subtler faculties of sympathy, empathy, pre¬
monition, discernment. . . our innate sensitivity to the truth.

PREMISE

Two ideas bracket the creative process: Premise, the idea that inspires
the writer’s desire to create a story, and Controlling Idea, the story's
ultimate meaning expressed through the action and aesthetic emotion
of the last act's climax. A Premise, however, unlike a Controlling Idea,
is rarely a closed statement. More likely, it’s an open-ended question:
What would happen if. .. ? What would happen if a shark swam into
a beach resort and devoured a vacationer? JAWS. What would happen
if a wife walked out on her husband and child? KRAMER VS.
KRAMER. Stanislavski called this the “Magic if. ..the daydreamy
hypothetical that floats through the mind, opening the door to the
imagination where everything and anything seems possible.

But “What would happen if. . ” is only one kind of Premise.
Writers find inspiration wherever they turn—in a friend’s light¬
hearted confession of a dark desire, the jibe of a legless beggar, a
nightmare or daydream, a newspaper fact, a child's fantasy. Even the
craft itself may inspire. Purely technical exercises, such as linking a
smooth transition from one scene to the next or editing dialogue to
avoid repetition, may trigger a burst of imagination. Anything may
premise the writing, even, for example, a glance out a window.

In 1965 Ingmar Bergman contracted labyrinthitis, a viral infection
of the inner ear that keeps its victims in a ceaselessly swirling vertigo,
even while sleeping. For weeks Bergman was bedridden, his head in a
brace, trying to keep vertigo at bay by staring at a spot his doctor had
painted on the ceiling, but with each glance away the room spun like a
whirligig. Concentrating on the spot, he began to imagine two faces
intermingled. Days later, as he recovered, he glanced through a
window and saw a nurse and a patient sitting comparing hands.
Those images, the nurse/patient relationship and merging faces, were
the genesis for Bergman’s masterpiece PERSONA.

Flashes of inspiration or intuition that seem so random and
spontaneous are in fact serendipitous. For what may inspire one

STRUCTURE AND MEANING « 113

writer will be ignored by another. The Premise awakens what waits
within, the visions or convictions nascent in the writer. The sum
total of his experience has prepared him for this moment and he
reacts to it as only he would. Now the work begins. Along the way
he interprets, chooses, and makes judgments. If, to some people, a
writer’s final statement about life appears dogmatic and opinion¬
ated, so be it. Bland and pacifying writers are a bore. We want
unfettered souls with the courage to take a point of view, artists
whose insights startle and excite.

Finally, it’s important to realize that whatever inspires the
writing need not stay in the writing. A Premise is not precious. As
long as it contributes to the growth of story, keep it, but should the
telling take a left turn, abandon the original inspiration to follow
the evolving story. The problem is not to start writing, but to keep
writing and renewing inspiration. We rarely know where we're
going; writing is discovery.

STRUCTURE AS RHETORIC

Make no mistake: While a story’s inspiration may be a dream and
its final effect aesthetic emotion, a work moves from an open
premise to a fulfilling climax only when the writer is possessed by
serious thought. For an artist must have not only ideas to express,
but ideas to prove. Expressing an idea, in the sense of exposing it, is
never enough. The audience must not just understand; it must
believe. You want the world to leave your story convinced that yours
is a truthful metaphor for life. And the means by which you bring
the audience to your point of view resides in the very design you
give your telling. As you create your story, you create your proof;
idea and structure intertwine in a rhetorical relationship.

STORYTELLING is the creative demonstration of truth. A
story is the living proof of an idea, the conversion of
idea to action. A story's event structure is the means
by which you first express, then prove your idea . . .
without explanation.

114 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

Master storytellers never explain. They do the hard, painfully
creative thing—they dramatize. Audiences are rarely interested, and
certainly never convinced, when forced to listen to the discussion of
ideas. Dialogue, the natural talk of characters pursuing desire, is not
a platform for the filmmaker's philosophy. Explanations of authorial
ideas, whether in dialogue or narration, seriously diminish a film’s
quality. A great story authenticates its ideas solely within the
dynamics of its events; failure to express a view of life through the
pure, honest consequences of human choice and action is a creative
defeat no amount of clever language can salvage.

To illustrate, consider that prolific genre, Crime. What idea is
expressed by virtually all detective fiction? “Crime doesn't pay.”
How do we come to understand that? Hopefully without one char¬
acter musing to another, “There! What’d I tell ya? Crime doesn’t
pay. Nope, it looked like they’d get away with it, but the wheels of
justice turned unrelentingly . . .” No, we see the idea acted out in
front of us: A crime is committed; for a while the criminal goes
free; eventually he’s apprehended and punished. In the act of pun¬
ishment—imprisoning him for life or shooting him dead on the
street—an emotionally charged idea runs through the audience.
And if we could put words to this idea, they wouldn’t be as polite as
“Crime does not pay.” Rather: “They got the bastard!” An electri¬
fying triumph of justice and social revenge.

The kind and quality of aesthetic emotion is relative. The
Psycho-Thriller strives for very strong effects; other forms, like the
Disillusionment plot or the Love Story, want the softer emotions of
perhaps sadness or compassion. But regardless of genre, the prin¬
ciple is universal: the story’s meaning, whether comic or tragic,
must be dramatized in an emotionally expressive Story Climax
without the aid of explanatory dialogue.

CONTROLLING IDEA

Theme has become a rather vague term in the writer’s vocabulary.
“Poverty,” “war,” and "love,” for example, are not themes; they
relate to setting or genre. A true theme is not a word but a sen-

STRUCTURE AND MEANING * X15

tence—one clear, coherent sentence that expresses a story's irre¬
ducible meaning. I prefer the phrase Controlling Idea, for like
theme, it names a story's root or central idea, but it also implies
function: The Controlling Idea shapes the writer’s strategic choices.
It’s yet another Creative Discipline to guide your aesthetic choices
toward what is appropriate or inappropriate in your story, toward
what is expressive of your Controlling Idea and may be kept versus
what is irrelevant to it and must be cut.

The Controlling Idea of a completed story must be expressible in
a single sentence. After the Premise is first imagined and the work is
evolving, explore everything and anything that comes to mind. Ulti¬
mately, however, the film must be molded around one idea. This is
not to say that a story can be reduced to a rubric. Far more is cap¬
tured within the web of a story that can ever be stated in words—
subtleties, subtexts, conceits, double meanings, richness of all kinds.
A story becomes a kind of living philosophy that the audience mem¬
bers grasp as a whole, in a flash, without conscious thought—a per¬
ception married to their life experiences. But the irony is this:

The more beautifully you shape your work around one clear
idea, the more meanings audiences will discover in your film as
they take your idea and follow its implications into every aspect of
their lives. Conversely, the more ideas you try to pack into a story,
the more they implode upon themselves, until the film collapses
into a rubble of tangential notions, saying nothing.

A CONTROLLING IDEA may be expressed in a single sen¬
tence describing how and why life undergoes change
from one condition of existence at the beginning to
another at the end.

The Controlling Idea has two components: Value plus Cause. It
identifies the positive or negative charge of the story's critical value
at the last act’s climax, and it identifies the chief reason that this
value has changed to its final state. The sentence composed from
these two elements, Value plus Cause, expresses the core meaning
of the story.

116 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

Value means the primary value in its positive or negative
charge that comes into the world or life of your character as a result
of the final action of the story. For example: An up-ending Crime
Story (IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) returns an unjust world
(negative) to justice (positive), suggesting a phrase such as “Justice
is restored . . ” In a down-ending Political Thriller (MISSING), the
military dictatorship commands the story’s world at climax,
prompting a negative phrase such as “Tyranny prevails ...” A posi¬
tive-ending Education Plot (GROUNDHOG DAY) arcs the protago¬
nist from a cynical, self-serving man to someone who’s genuinely
selfless and loving, leading to “Happiness fills our lives ...” A neg¬
ative-ending Love Story (DANGEROUS LIAISONS) turns passion
into self-loathing, evoking “Hatred destroys ...”

Cause refers to the primary reason that the life or world of the
protagonist has turned to its positive or negative value. Working
back from the ending to the beginning, we trace the chief cause
deep within the character, society, or environment that has brought
this value into existence. A complex story may contain many forces
for change, but generally one cause dominates the others. There¬
fore, in a Crime Story, neither “Crime doesn't pay ...” (justice
triumphs . . . ) nor “Crime pays ...” (injustice triumphs . . . )
could stand as a full Controlling Idea because each gives us only
half a meaning—the ending value. A story of substance also
expresses why its world or protagonist has ended on its specific
value.

If, for example, you were writing for Clint Eastwood’s Dirty
Harry, your full Controlling Idea of Value plus Cause would be:
“Justice triumphs because the protagonist is more violent than the
criminals.” Dirty Harry manages some minor detective work here
and there, but his violence is the dominant cause for change. This
insight then guides you to what’s appropriate and inappropriate. It
tells you it would be inappropriate to write a scene in which Dirty
Harry comes upon the murder victim, discovers a ski cap left
behind by the fleeing killer, takes out a magnifying glass, examines
it, and concludes, “Hmm . . . this man’s approximately thirty-five
years of age; he has reddish hair; and he comes from the coal-

STRUCTURE AND MEANING + 117

mining regions of Pennsylvania—notice the anthracitic dust.” This
is Sherlock Holmes, not Dirty Harry.

If, however, you were writing for Peter Falk’s Columbo, your Con¬
trolling Idea would be: “Justice is restored because the protagonist is
more clever than the criminal.” The ski cap forensics might be appro¬
priate for Columbo because the dominant cause for change in the
Columbo series is Sherlock Holmesian deduction. It would be inap¬
propriate, however, for Columbo to reach under his wrinkled raincoat,
come up with a .44 Magnum, and start blowing people away.

To complete the previous examples: IN THE HEAT OF THE
NIGHT—justice is restored because a perceptive black outsider sees
the truth of white perversion. GROUNDHOG DAY—happiness
fills our lives when we learn to love unconditionally. MISSING—
tyranny prevails because it’s supported by a corrupt CIA. DAN¬
GEROUS LIAISONS—hatred destroys us when we fear the opposite
sex. The Controlling Idea is the purest form of a story’s meaning, the
how and why of change, the vision of life the audience members
carry away into their lives.

Meaning and the Creative Process

How do you find your story’s Controlling Idea? The creative process
may begin anywhere. You might be prompted by a Premise, a “What
would happen if...or a bit of character, or an image. You might
start in the middle, the beginning, near the end. As your fictional
world and characters grow, events interlink and the story builds. Then
comes that crucial moment when you take the leap and create the
Story Climax. This climax of the last act is a final action that excites
and moves you, that feels complete and satisfying. The Controlling
Idea is now at hand.

Looking at your ending, ask: As a result of this climatic action,
what value, positively or negatively charged, is brought into the world
of my protagonist? Next, tracing backward from this climax, digging
to the bedrock, ask: What is the chief cause, force, or means by which
this value is brought into his world? The sentence you compose from
the answers to those two questions becomes your Controlling Idea.

Il8 + ROBERT MCKEE

In other words, the story tells you its meaning; you do not dic¬
tate meaning to the story. You do not draw action from idea, rather
idea from action. For no matter your inspiration, ultimately the
story embeds its Controlling Idea within the final climax, and when
this event speaks its meaning, you will experience one of the most
powerful moments in the writing life— Self-Recognition: The Story
Climax mirrors your inner self, and if your story is from the very
best sources within you, more often than not you'll be shocked by
what you see reflected in it.

You may think you're a warm, loving human being until you
find yourself writing tales of dark, cynical consequence. Or you
may think you’re a street-wise guy who’s been around the block a
few times until you find yourself writing warm, compassionate
endings. You think you know who you are, but often you’re
amazed by what’s skulking inside in need of expression. In other
words, if a plot works out exactly as you first planned, you’re not
working loosely enough to give room to your imagination and
instincts. Your story should surprise you again and again. Beautiful
story design is a combination of the subject found, the imagination
at work, and the mind loosely but wisely executing the craft.

Idea Versus Counter-Idea

Paddy Chayefsky once told me that when he finally discovered his
story's meaning, he'd scratch it out on a scrap of paper and tape it to
his typewriter, so that nothing going through the machine wouldn't in
one way or another express his central theme. With a clear statement
of Value plus Cause staring him in the eye, he could resist intriguing
irrelevancies and concentrate on unifying the telling around the
story’s core meaning. By “one way or another," Chayefsky meant he’d
forge the story dynamically, moving it back and forth across the
opposing charges of its primary values. His improvisations would be
so shaped that sequence after sequence alternately expressed the posi¬
tive, then negative dimension of his Controlling Idea. In other words,
he fashioned his stories by playing Idea against Counter-Idea.

STRUCTURE AND MEANING « 119

PROGRESSIONS build by moving dynamically between
the positive and negative charges of the values at stake
in the story.

From the moment of inspiration you reach into your fictional
world in search of a design. You have to build a bridge of story from
the opening to the ending, a progression of events that spans from
Premise to Controlling Idea. These events echo the contradictory
voices of one theme. Sequence by sequence, often scene by scene, the
positive Idea and its negative Counter-Idea argue, so to speak, back
and forth, creating a dramatized dialectical debate. At climax one of
these two voices wins and becomes the story's Controlling Idea.

To illustrate with the familiar cadences of the Crime Story : A typ¬
ical opening sequence expresses the negative Counter-Idea, “Crime
pays because the criminals are brilliant and/or ruthless” as it drama¬
tizes a crime so enigmatic (VERTIGO) or committed by such diabol¬
ical criminals (DIE HARD) that the audience is stunned: “They're
going to get away with it!” But as a veteran detective discovers a clue
left by the fleeing killer (THE BIG SLEEP), the next sequence contra¬
dicts this fear with the positive Idea, “Crime doesn't pay because the
protagonist is even more brilliant and/or ruthless." Then perhaps the
cop is misled into suspecting the wrong person (FAREWELL, MY
LOVELY): “Crime pays." But soon the protagonist uncovers the real
identity of the villain (THE FUGITIVE): “Crime doesn't pay.” Next the
criminal captures, may even seem to kill, the protagonist (ROBOCOP):
“Crime pays.” But the cop virtually resurrects from the dead
(SUDDEN IMPACT) and goes back on the hunt: “Crime doesn't pay.”

The positive and negative assertions of the same idea contest
back and forth through the film, building in intensity, until at Crisis
they collide head-on in a last impasse. Out of this rises the Story
Climax, in which one or the other idea succeeds. This may be the
positive Idea: “Justice triumphs because the protagonist is tena¬
ciously resourceful and courageous” (BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK,
SPEED, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS), or the negative Counter-
Idea: “Injustice prevails because the antagonist is overwhelmingly
ruthless and powerful” (SEVEN, Q & A, CHINATOWN). Which-

120 + ROBERT MCKEE

ever of the two is dramatized in the final climatic action becomes
the Controlling Idea of Value plus Cause, the purest statement of
the story’s conclusive and decisive meaning.

This rhythm of Idea versus Counter-Idea is fundamental and
essential to our art. It pulses at the heart of all fine stories, no
matter how internalized the action. What's more, this simple
dynamic can become very complex, subtle, and ironic.

In SEA OF LOVE detective Keller (Al Pacino) falls in love with
his chief suspect (Ellen Barkin). As a result, each scene that points
toward her guilt turns with irony: positive on the value of justice,
negative on the value of love. In the maturation plot SHINE,
David’s (Noah Taylor) musical victories (positive) provoke his
father’s (Armin Mueller-Stahl) envy and brutal repression (nega¬
tive), driving the pianist into a pathological immaturity (doubly
negative), which makes his final success a triumph of maturity in
both art and spirit (doubly positive).

DIDACTICISM

A note of caution: In creating the dimensions of your story’s “argu¬
ment,” take great care to build the power of both sides. Compose
the scenes and sequences that contradict your final statement with
as much truth and energy as those that reinforce it. If your film
ends on the Counter-Idea, such as “Crime pays because . . . ,” then
amplify the sequences that lead the audience to feel justice will win
out. If your film ends on the Idea, such as “Justice triumphs
because . . . then enhance the sequences expressing “Crime pays
and pays big.” In other words, do not slant your “argument.”

If, in a morality tale, you were to write your antagonist as an
ignorant fool who more or less destroys himself, are we persuaded
that good will prevail? But if, like an ancient myth-maker, you were
to create an antagonist of virtual omnipotence who reaches the
brink of success, you would force yourself to create a protagonist
who will rise to the occasion and become even more powerful,
more brilliant. In this balanced telling your victory of good over evil
now rings with validity.

STRUCTURE AND MEANING * 121

The danger is this: When your Premise is an idea you feel you
must prove to the world, and you design your story as an undeniable
certification of that idea, you set yourself on the road to didacticism.
In your zeal to persuade, you will stifle the voice of the other side.
Misusing and abusing art to preach, your screenplay will become a
thesis film, a thinly disguised sermon as you strive in a single stroke
to convert the world. Didacticism results from the naive enthusiasm
that fiction can be used like a scalpel to cut out the cancers of society.

More often than not, such stories take the form of Social
Drama, a lead-handed genre with two defining conventions: Iden¬
tify a social ill; dramatize its remedy. The writer, for example, may
decide that war is the scourge of humanity, and pacifism is the
cure. In his zeal to convince us all his good people are very, very
good people, and all his bad people are very, very bad people. All
the dialogue is “on the nose” laments about the futility and insanity
of war, heartfelt declarations that the cause of war is the “establish¬
ment.” From outline to last draft, he fills the screen with stomach¬
turning images, making certain that each and every scene says loud
and clear: “War is a scourge, but it can be cured by pacifism . . .
war is a scourge cured by pacifism . . . war is a scourge cured by
pacifism . . .” until you want to pick up a gun.

But the pacifist pleas of antiwar films (OH! WHAT A LOVELY
WAR, APOCALYPSE NOW, GALLIPOLI, HAMBURGER HILL)
rarely sensitize us to war. We're unconvinced because in the rush
to prove he has the answer, the writer is blind to a truth we know
too well—men love war.

This does not mean that starting with an idea is certain to pro¬
duce didactic work . . . but that's the risk. As a story develops, you
must willingly entertain opposite, even repugnant ideas. The finest
writers have dialectical, flexible minds that easily shift points of view.
They see the positive, the negative, and all shades of irony, seeking
the truth of these views honestly and convincingly. This omniscience
forces them to become even more creative, more imaginative, and
more insightful. Ultimately, they express what they deeply believe,
but not until they have allowed themselves to weigh each living issue
and experience all its possibilities.

122 4 ROBERT MCKEE

Make no mistake, no one can achieve excellence as a writer
without being something of a philosopher and holding strong con¬
victions. The trick is not to be a slave to your ideas, but to immerse
yourself in life. For the proof of your vision is not how well you can
assert your Controlling Idea, but its victory over the enormously
powerful forces that you array against it.

Consider the superb balance of three antiwar films directed by
Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick and his screenwriters researched and
explored the Counter-Idea to look deep within the human psyche
itself. Their stories reveal war to be the logical extension of an intrinsic
dimension of human nature that loves to fight and kill, chilling us
with the realization that what humanity loves to do, it will do—as it
has for aeons, through the now and into all foreseeable futures.

In Kubrick’s PATHS OF GLORY the fate of France hangs on
winning the war against the Germans at any cost. So when the
French army retreats from battle, an outraged general devises an
innovative motivational strategy: He orders his artillery to bombard
his own troops. In DR. STRANGE LOVE the United States and
Russia both realize that in nuclear war, not losing is more impor¬
tant than winning, so each concocts a scheme for not losing so
effective it incinerates all life on Earth. In FULL METAL JACKET,
the Marine Corps faces a tough task: how to persuade human
beings to ignore the genetic prohibition against killing their own
kind. The simple solution is to brainwash recruits into believing
that the enemy is not human; killing a man then becomes easy,
even if he’s your drill instructor. Kubrick knew that if he gave the
humanity enough ammunition, it would shoot itself.

A great work is a living metaphor that says, "Life is like this
The classics, down through the ages, give us not solutions but
lucidity, not answers but poetic candor; they make inescapably
clear the problems all generations must solve to be human.

IDEALIST, PESSIMIST, IRONIST

Writers and the stories they tell can be usefully divided into three grand
categories, according to the emotional charge of their Controlling Idea.

STRUCTURE AND MEANING « 123

PREMISE

CONTROLLING

IDEA

Idealistic Controlling Ideas

“Up-ending” stories expressing the optimism, hopes, and dreams
of mankind, a positively charged vision of the human spirit; life as
we wish it to be. Examples:

“Love fills our lives when we conquer intellectual illusions
and follow our instincts”: HANNAH AND HER SISTERS. In this

124 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

Multiplot story, a collection of New Yorkers are seeking love, but
they’re unable to find it because they keep thinking, analyzing,
trying to decipher the meaning of things: sexual politics, careers,
morality or immortality. One by one, however, they cast off their
intellectual illusions and listen to their hearts. The moment they
do, they all find love. This is one of the most optimistic films
Woody Allen has ever made.

“Goodness triumphs when we outwit evil”: THE WITCHES OF
EASTWICK. The witches ingeniously turn the devil’s own dirty
tricks against him and find goodness and happiness in the form of
three chubby-cheeked babies.

“The courage and genius of humanity will prevail over the hos¬
tility of Nature.” Survival Films, a subgenre of Action/Adventure, are
“up-ending” stories of life-and-death conflict with forces of the
environment. At the brink of extinction, the protagonists, through
dint of will and resourcefulness, battle the often cruel personality
of Mother Nature and endure: THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE,
JAWS, QUEST FOR FIRE, ARACHNOPHOBIA, FITZCAR-
RALDO, FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, ALIVE.

Pessimistic Controlling Ideas

“Down-ending” stories expressing our cynicism, our sense of loss and
misfortune, a negatively charged vision of civilization’s decline, of
humanity's dark dimensions; life as we dread it to be but know it so
often is. Examples:

“Passion turns to violence and destroys our lives when we use
people as objects of pleasure”: DANCE WITH A STRANGER. The
lovers in this British work think their problem is a difference of
class, but class has been overcome by countless couples. The deep
conflict is that their affair is poisoned by desires to possess each
other as objects for neurotic gratification, until one seizes the ulti¬
mate possession—the life of her lover.

“Evil triumphs because it’s part of human nature”: CHINA¬
TOWN. On a superficial level, CHINATOWN suggests that the
rich get away with murder. They do indeed. But more profoundly

STRUCTURE AND MEANING 4 125

the film expresses the ubiquity of evil. In reality, because good and
evil are equal parts of human nature, evil vanquishes good as often
as good conquers evil. We're both angel and devil. If our natures
leaned just slightly toward one or the other, all social dilemmas
would have been solved centuries ago. But we’re so divided, we
never know from day to day which we’ll be. One day we build the
Cathedral of Notre Dame; the next, Auschwitz.

“The power of nature will have the final say over mankind's
futile efforts.” When the Counter-Idea of survival films becomes
the Controlling Idea, we have that rare “down-ending” movie in
which again human beings battle a manifestation of nature, but
now nature prevails: SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC, THE ELE¬
PHANT MAN, EARTHQUAKE, and THE BIRDS, in which nature
lets us off with a warning. These films are rare because the pes¬
simistic vision is a hard truth that some people wish to avoid.

Ironic Controlling Ideas

“Up/down-ending” stories expressing our sense of the complex,
dual nature of existence, a simultaneously charged positive and
negative vision; life at its most complete and realistic.

Here optimism/idealism and pessimism/cynicism merge. Rather
than voicing one extreme or the other, the story says both. The Ideal¬
istic “Love triumphs when we sacrifice our needs for others,” as in
KRAMER VS. KRAMER, melds with the Pessimistic “Love destroys
when self-interest rules,” as in THE WAR OF THE ROSES, and
results in an ironic Controlling Idea: “Love is both pleasure and pain,
a poignant anguish, a tender cruelty we pursue because without it life
has no meaning,” as in ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN, ADDICTED
TO LOVE.

What follows are two examples of Controlling Ideas whose
ironies have helped define the ethics and attitudes of contemporary
American society. First, the positive irony:

The compulsive pursuit of contemporary values—success,

fortune, fame, sex, power—will destroy you, but if you

126 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

see this truth in time and throw away your obsession,
you can redeem yourself.

Until the 1970s an “up-ending” could be loosely defined as
“The protagonist gets what he wants.” At climax the protagonist’s
object of desire became a trophy of sorts, depending on the value at
stake—the lover of one’s dreams (love), the dead body of the villain
(justice), a badge of achievement (fortune, victory), public recogni¬
tion (power, fame)—and he won it.

In the 1970s, however, Hollywood evolved a highly ironic ver¬
sion of the success story. Redemption Plots, in which protagonists
pursue values that were once esteemed—money, reknown, career,
love, winning, success—but with a compulsiveness, a blindness
that carries them to the brink of self-destruction. They stand to lose,
if not their lives, their humanity. They manage, however, to glimpse
the ruinous nature of their obsession, stop before they go over the
edge, then throw away what they once cherished. This pattern gives
rise to an ending rich in irony: At climax the protagonist sacrifices
his dream (positive), a value that has become a soul-corrupting fixa¬
tion (negative), to gain an honest, sane, balanced life (positive).

THE PAPER CHASE, THE DEER HUNTER, KRAMER VS.
KRAMER, AN UNMARRIED WOMAN, 10, AND JUSTICE FOR ALL,
TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN, GOING
IN STYLE, QUIZ SHOW, BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, THE
FISHER KING, GRAND CANYON, RAIN MAN, HANNAH AND
HER SISTERS, AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, TOOTSIE,
REGARDING HENRY, ORDINARY PEOPLE, CLEAN AND SOBER,
NORTH DALLAS FORTY, OUT OF AFRICA, BABY BOOM, THE
DOCTOR, SCHINDLER'S LIST, and JERRY MAGUIRE all pivot
around this irony, each expressing it in a unique and powerful way. As
these titles indicate, this idea has been a magnet for Oscars.

In terms of technique, the execution of the climactic action in
these films is fascinating. Historically, a positive ending is a scene
in which the protagonist takes an action that gets him what he
wants. Yet in all the works cited above, the protagonist either
refuses to act on his obsession or throws away what he once

STRUCTURE AND MEANING + 127

desired. He or she wins by “losing." Like solving the Zen riddle of
the sound of one hand clapping, the writer’s problem in each case
was how to make a nonaction or negative action feel positive.

At the climax of NORTH DALLAS FORTY All-Star wide
receiver Phillip Elliot (Nick Nolte) opens his arms and lets the foot¬
ball bounce off his chest, announcing in his gesture that he won’t
play this childish game anymore.

THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN ends as the former rodeo star
Sonny Steele (Robert Redford), now reduced to peddling breakfast
cereal, releases his sponsor’s prize stallion into the wild, symboli¬
cally freeing himself from his need for fame.

OUT OF AFRICA is the story of a woman living the 1980s
ethic of “I am what I own.” Karen’s (Meryl Streep) first words are:
“I had a farm in Africa.” She drags her furniture from Denmark to
Kenya to build a home and plantation. She so defines herself by
her possessions that she calls the laborers “her people” until her
lover points out that she doesn’t actually own these people. When
her husband infects her with syphilis, she doesn’t divorce him
because her identity is “wife,” defined by her possession of a hus¬
band. In time, however, she comes to realize you are not what you
own; you are your values, talents, what you can do. When her lover
is killed, she grieves but is not lost because she is not he. With a
shrug, she lets husband, home, everything go, surrendering all she
had, but gaining herself.

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT tells of a very different obsession.
Aurora (Shirley MacLaine) lives the Epicurean philosophy that hap¬
piness means never suffering, that the secret of life is to avoid all
negative emotion. She refuses two renowned sources of misery,
career and lovers. She’s so afraid of the pain of growing old, she
dresses twenty years too young for herself. Her home has the un-
lived-in look of a doll’s house. The only life she leads is over the
telephone vicariously through her daughter. But on her fifty-second
birthday she begins to realize that the depth of joy you experience
is in direct proportion to the pain you’re willing to bear. In the last
act she throws away the emptiness of a pain-free life to embrace
children, lover, age, and all the pleasure and woe they bring.

128 4 ROBERT MCKEE

Second, the negative irony:

If you ding to your obsession, your ruthless pursuit will
achieve your desire, then destroy you.

WALL STREET; CASINO; THE WAR OF THE ROSES; STAR
’80; NASHVILLE; NETWORK; THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T
THEY?—these films are the Punitive Plot counterpart to the Redemp¬
tion Plots above. In them the “down-ending” Counter-Idea becomes
the Controlling Idea as protagonists remain steadfastly driven by
their need to achieve fame or success, and never think to abandon it.
At Story Climax the protagonists achieve their desire (positive), only
to be destroyed by it (negative). In NIXON the president’s (Anthony
Hopkins) blind, corrupt trust in his political power destroys him and
with him the nation’s faith in government. In THE ROSE Rose
(Bette Midler) is destroyed by her passion for drugs, sex, and rock ’n’
roll. In ALL THAT JAZZ foe Gideon (Roy Scheider) is brought down
by his neurotic need for drugs, sex, and musical comedy.

On Irony

The effect of irony on an audience is that wonderful reaction, “Ah,
life is just like that.” We recognize that idealism and pessimism are
at the extremes of experience, that life is rarely all sunshine and
strawberries, nor is it all doom and drek; it is both. From the worst
of experiences something positive can be gained; for the richest of
experiences a great price must be paid. No matter how we try to
plot a straight passage through life, we sail on the tides of irony.
Reality is relentlessly ironic, and this is why stories that end in
irony tend to last the longest through time, travel the widest in the
world, and draw the greatest love and respect from audiences.

This is also why, of the three possible emotional charges at
climax, irony is by far the most difficult to write. It demands the
deepest wisdom and the highest craft for three reasons.

First, it’s tough enough to come up with either a bright, ideal¬
istic ending or a sober, pessimistic climax that’s satisfying and con-

STRUCTURE AND MEANING + 129

vincing. But an ironic climax is a single action that makes both a
positive and a negative statement. How to do two in one?

Second, how to say both clearly ? Irony doesn't mean ambiguity.
Ambiguity is a blur; one thing cannot be distinguished from
another. But there’s nothing ambiguous about irony; it's a clear,
double declaration of what’s gained and what’s lost, side by side.
Nor does irony mean coincidence. A true irony is honestly moti¬
vated. Stories that end by random chance, doubly charged or not,
are meaningless, not ironic.

Third, if at climax the life situation of the protagonist is both
positive and negative, how to express it so that the two charges
remain separated in the audience’s experience and don’t cancel
each other out, and you end up saying nothing?

MEANING AND SOCIETY

Once you discover your Controlling Idea, respect it. Never allow
yourself the luxury of thinking, “It’s just entertainment.” What,
after all, is “entertainment”? Entertainment is the ritual of sit¬
ting in the dark, staring at a screen, investing tremendous con¬
centration and energy into what one hopes will be a satisfying,
meaningful emotional experience. Any film that hooks, holds,
and pays off the story ritual is entertainment. Whether it be
THE WIZARD OF OZ (USA/1939) or THE 400 BLOWS
(France/1959), LA DOLCE VITA (Italy/1960) or SNOW WHITE
AND THE THREE STOOGES (USA/1961), no story is innocent.
All coherent tales express an idea veiled inside an emotional
spell.

In 388 b.c. Plato urged the city fathers of Athens to exile all
poets and storytellers. They are a threat to society, he argued.
Writers deal with ideas, but not in the open, rational manner of
philosophers. Instead, they conceal their ideas inside the seductive
emotions of art. Yet felt ideas, as Plato pointed out, are ideas
nonetheless. Every effective story sends a charged idea out to us, in
effect compelling the idea into us, so that we must believe. In fact,
the persuasive power of a story is so great that we may believe its

130 4 ROBERT MCKEE

meaning even if we find it morally repellent. Storytellers, Plato
insisted, are dangerous people. He was right.

Consider DEATH WISH. Its Controlling Idea is “Justice tri¬
umphs when citizens take the law into their own hands and kill the
people who need killing.” Of all the vile ideas in human history,
this is the vilest. Armed with it, the Nazis devastated Europe. Hitler
believed he would turn Europe into a paradise once he killed the
people who needed killing . . . and he had his list.

When DEATH WISH opened, newspaper reviewers across the
country were morally outraged at the sight of Charles Bronson
stalking Manhattan, gunning down people if they happened to look
like muggers: “Hollywood thinks this passes for justice?” they
ranted. “Whatever became of due process of law?” But in nearly
every review I read, at some point the critic noted: “. . . and yet the
audience seemed to enjoy it.” A code for: “. . . and so did the critic.”
Critics never cite the pleasure of the audience unless they share it.
In spite of their scandalized sensibilities, the film got to them too.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to live in a country where
DEATH WISH couldn’t be made. I oppose all censorship. In pur¬
suit of truth, we must willingly suffer the ugliest of lies. We must,
as Justice Holmes argued, trust the marketplace of ideas. If
everyone is given a voice, even the irrationally radical or cruelly
reactionary, humanity will sort through all possibilities and make
the right choice. No civilization, including Plato’s, has ever been
destroyed because its citizens learned too much truth.

Authoritative personalities, like Plato, fear the threat that comes
not from idea, but from emotion. Those in power never want us to
feel. Thought can be controlled and manipulated, but emotion is
willful and unpredictable. Artists threaten authority by exposing lies
and inspiring passion for change. This is why when tyrants seize
power, their firing squads aim at the heart of the writer.

Lastly, given story's power to influence, we need to look at the
issue of an artist’s social responsibility. I believe we have no
responsibility to cure social ills or renew faith in humanity, to uplift
the spirits of society or even express our inner being. We have only
one responsibility: to tell the truth. Therefore, study your Story

STRUCTURE AND MEANING * 131

Climax and extract from it your Controlling Idea. But before you
take another step, ask yourself this question: Is this the truth? Do I
believe in the meaning of my story? If the answer is no, toss it and
start again. If yes, do everything possible to get your work into the
world. For although an artist may, in his private life, lie to others,
even to himself, when he creates he tells the truth; and in a world
of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social
responsibility.

PART 3

THE

PRINCIPLES
OF STORY
DESIGN

When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination
is taxed to its utmost—and will produce its richest ideas. Given
total freedom the work is likely to sprawl.

—T. S. Eliot

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY

From what material do we create the scenes that will one day walk
and talk their way across the screen? What is the clay we twist and
shape, keep or throw away? What is the “substance” of story?

In all other arts the answer is self-evident. The composer has
his instrument and the notes it sounds. The dancer calls her body
her instrument. Sculptors chisel stone. Painters stir paint. All
artists can lay hands on the raw material of their art—except the
writer. For at the nucleus of a story is a “substance,” like the energy
swirling in an atom, that’s never directly seen, heard, or touched,
yet we know it and feel it. The stuff of story is alive but intangible.

“Intangible?” I hear you thinking. “But I have my words. Dia¬
logue, description. I can put hands on my pages. The writer’s raw
material is language.” In fact, it’s not, and the careers of many tal¬
ented writers, especially those who come to screenwriting after a
strong literary education, flounder because of the disastrous mis¬
understanding of this principle. For just as glass is a medium for
light, air a medium for sound, language is only a medium, one of
many, in fact, for storytelling. Something far more profound than
mere words beats at the heart of a story.

And at the opposite end of story sits another equally profound
phenomenon: the audience’s reaction to this substance. When you
think about it, going to the movies is bizarre. Hundreds of
strangers sit in a blackened room, elbow to elbow, for two or more
hours. They don’t go to the toilet or get a smoke. Instead, they stare
wide-eyed at a screen, investing more uninterrupted concentration

H5

136 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

than they give to work, paying money to suffer emotions they’d do
anything to avoid in life. From this perspective, a second question
arises: What is the source of story energy? How does it compel
such intense mental and sentient attention from the audience?
How do stories work?

The answers to these questions come when the artist explores
the creative process subjective ly. To understand the substance of
story and how it performs, you need to view your work from the
inside out, from the center of your character, looking out at the
world through your character’s eyes, experiencing the story as if
you were the living character yourself. To slip into this subjective
and highly imaginative point of view, you need to look closely at
this creature you intend to inhabit, a character. Or more specifically,
a protagonist. For although the protagonist is a character like any
other, as the central and essential role, he embodies all aspects of
character in absolute terms.

THE PROTAGONIST

Generally, the protagonist is a single character. A story, however,
could be driven by a duo, such as THELMA & LOUISE; a trio, THE
WITCHES OF EASTWICK; more, THE SEVEN SAMURAI or THE
DIRTY DOZEN. In THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN an entire class
of people, the proletariat, create a massive Plural-Protagonist.

For two or more characters to form a Plural-Protagonist, two
conditions must be met: First, all individuals in the group share the
same desire. Second, in the struggle to achieve this desire, they
mutually suffer and benefit. If one has a success, all benefit. If one
has a setback, all suffer. Within a Plural-Protagonist, motivation,
action, and consequence are communal.

A story may, on the other hand, be Multiprotagonist. Here,
unlike the Plural-Protagonist, characters pursue separate and indi¬
vidual desires, suffering and benefiting independently: PULP FIC¬
TION, HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, PARENTHOOD, DINER,
DO THE RIGHT THING, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, EAT DRINK
MAN WOMAN, PELLE THE CONQUEROR, HOPE AND GLORY,

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY « 137

HIGH HOPES. Robert Altman is the master of this design: A
WEDDING, NASHVILLE, SHORT CUTS.

On screen the Multiprotagonist story is as old as GRAND
HOTEL; in the novel older still, War and Peace; in the theatre older
yet, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Multiprotagonist stories become
Multiplot stories. Rather than driving the telling through the
focused desire of a protagonist, either single or plural, these works
weave a number of smaller stories, each with its own protagonist,
to create a dynamic portrait of a specific society.

The protagonist need not be human. It may be an animal,
BABE, or a cartoon, BUGS BUNNY, or even an inanimate object,
such as the hero of the children's story The Little Engine That Could.
Anything that can be given a free will and the capacity to desire,
take action, and suffer the consequences can be a protagonist.

It’s even possible, in rare cases, to switch protagonists halfway
through a story. PSYCHO does this, making the shower murder
both an emotional and a formal jolt. With the protagonist dead, the
audience is momentarily confused; whom is this movie about? The
answer is a Plural-Protagonist as the victim's sister, boyfriend, and
a private detective take over the story. But no matter whether the
story’s protagonist is single, multi or plural, no matter how he is
characterized, all protagonists have certain hallmark qualities, and
the first is willpower.

A PROTAGONIST is a willful character.

Other characters may be dogged, even inflexible, but the pro¬
tagonist in particular is a willful being. The exact quantity of this
willpower, however, may not be measurable. A fine story is not nec¬
essarily the struggle of a gigantic will versus absolute forces of
inevitability. Quality of will is as important as quantity. A protago¬
nist’s willpower may be less than that of the biblical Job, but pow¬
erful enough to sustain desire through conflict and ultimately take
actions that create meaningful and irreversible change.

What’s more, the true strength of the protagonist’s will may
hide behind a passive characterization. Consider Blanche DuBois,

138 « ROBERT MCKEE

protagonist of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. At first glance she
seems weak, drifting and will-less, only wanting, she says, to live in
reality. Yet beneath her frail characterization, Blanche’s deep char¬
acter owns a powerful will that drives her unconscious desire: What
she really wants is to escape from reality. So Blanche does everything
she can to buffer herself against the ugly world that engulfs her:
She acts the grand dame, puts doilies on frayed furniture, lamp¬
shades on naked light bulbs, tries to make a Prince Charming out
of a dullard. When none of this succeeds, she takes the final escape
from reality—she goes insane.

On the other hand, while Blanche only seems passive, the truly
passive protagonist is a regrettably common mistake. A story
cannot be told about a protagonist who doesn’t want anything, who
cannot make decisions, whose actions effect no change at any level.

The PROTAGONIST has a conscious desire.

Rather, the protagonist’s will impels a known desire. The pro¬
tagonist has a need or goal, an object of desire, and knows it. If you
could pull your protagonist aside, whisper in his ear, “What do you
want?” he would have an answer: “I’d like X today, Y next week, but
in the end I want Z.” The protagonist’s object of desire may be
external: the destruction of the shark in JAWS, or internal: maturity
in BIG. In either case, the protagonist knows what he wants, and
for many characters a simple, clear, conscious desire is sufficient.

The PROTAGONIST may also have a self-contradictory

unconscious desire.

However, the most memorable, fascinating characters tend to
have not only a conscious but an unconscious desire. Although
these complex protagonists are unaware of their subconscious
need, the audience senses it, perceiving in them an inner contra¬
diction. The conscious and unconscious desires of a multidimen¬
sional protagonist contradict each other. What he believes he
wants is the antithesis of what he actually but unwittingly wants.

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY « 139

This is self-evident. What would be the point of giving a character
a subconscious desire if it happens to be the very thing he know¬
ingly seeks?

The PROTAGONIST has the capacities to pursue the

Object of Desire convincingly.

The protagonist’s characterization must be appropriate. He
needs a believable combination of qualities in the right balance to
pursue his desires. This doesn’t mean he’ll get what he wants. He
may fail. But the character’s desires must be realistic enough in
relationship to his will and capacities for the audience to believe
that he could be doing what they see him doing and that he has a
chance for fulfillment.

The PROTAGONIST must have at least a chance to attain

his desire.

An audience has no patience for a protagonist who lacks all
possibility of realizing his desire. The reason is simple: No one
believes this of his own life. No one believes he doesn’t have even
the smallest chance of fulfilling his wishes. But if we were to pull
the camera back on life, the grand overview might lead us to con¬
clude that, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, "The mass of
men lead lives of quiet desperation,” that most people waste their
precious time and die with the feeling they’ve fallen short of their
dreams. As honest as this painful insight may be, we cannot allow
ourselves to believe it. Instead, we carry hope to the end.

Hope, after all, is not unreasonable. It’s simply hypothetical. “If
this ... if that ... if I learn more ... if I love more ... if I disci¬
pline myself ... if I win the lottery ... if things change, then I’ll
have a chance of getting from life what I want.” We all carry hope
in our hearts, no matter the odds against us. A protagonist, there¬
fore, who's literally hopeless, who hasn’t even the minimal capacity
to achieve his desire, cannot interest us.

140 « ROBERT MCKEE

The PROTAGONIST has the will and capacity to pursue
the object of his conscious and/or unconscious desire
to the end of the line, to the human limit established
by setting and genre.

The art of story is not about the middle ground, but about the
pendulum of existence swinging to the limits, about life lived in
its most intense states. We explore the middle ranges of experi¬
ence, but only as a path to the end of the line. The audience senses
that limit and wants it reached. For no matter how intimate or
epic the setting, instinctively the audience draws a circle around
the characters and their world, a circumference of experience
that’s defined by the nature of the fictional reality. This line may
reach inward to the soul, outward into the universe, or in both
directions at once. The audience, therefore, expects the storyteller
to be an artist of vision who can take his story to those distant
depths and ranges.

A STORY must build to a final action beyond which the
audience cannot imagine another.

In other words, a film cannot send its audience to the street
rewriting it: “Happy ending ... but shouldn’t she have settled
things with her father? Shouldn’t she have broken up with Ed
before she moved in with Mac? Shouldn’t she have . . Or:
“Downer . . . the guy’s dead, but why didn’t he call the cops? And
didn’t he keep a gun under the dash, and shouldn’t he have ... ?”
If people exit imagining scenes they thought they should have seen
before or after the ending we give them, they will be less than
happy moviegoers. We’re supposed to be better writers than they.
The audience wants to be taken to the limit, to where all questions
are answered, all emotion satisfied—the end of the line.

The protagonist takes us to this limit. He must have it within
himself to pursue his desire to the boundaries of human experi¬
ence in depth, breadth, or both, to reach absolute and irreversible
change. This, by the way, doesn’t mean your film can’t have a

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY * 141

sequel; your protagonist may have more tales to tell. It means that
each story must find closure for itself.

The PROTAGONIST must be empathetic; he may or may

not be sympathetic.

Sympathetic means likable. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, for
example, or Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in their typical
roles: The moment they step onscreen, we like them. We’d want
them as friends, family members, or lovers. They have an innate
likability and evoke sympathy. Empathy, however, is a more pro¬
found response.

Empathetic means “like me.” Deep within the protagonist the
audience recognizes a certain shared humanity. Character and
audience are not alike in every fashion, of course; they may share
only a single quality. But there's something about the character
that strikes a chord. In that moment of recognition, the audience
suddenly and instinctively wants the protagonist to achieve what¬
ever it is that he desires.

The unconscious logic of the audience runs like this: “This char¬
acter is like me. Therefore, I want him to have whatever it is he
wants, because if I were he in those circumstances, I'd want the
same thing for myself.” Hollywood has many synonymic expressions
for this connection: “somebody to get behind,” “someone to root for.”
All describe the empathetic connection that the audience strikes
between itself and the protagonist. An audience may, if so moved,
empathize with every character in your film, but it must empathize
with your protagonist. If not, the audience/story bond is broken.

THE AUDIENCE BOND

The audience's emotional involvement is held by the glue of
empathy. If the writer fails to fuse a bond between filmgoer and
protagonist, we sit outside feeling nothing. Involvement has
nothing to do with evoking altruism or compassion. We empathize
for very personal, if not egocentric, reasons. When we identify with

142 4 ROBERT MCKEE

a protagonist and his desires in life, we are in fact rooting for our
own desires in life. Through empathy, the vicarious linking of our¬
selves to a fictional human being, we test and stretch our
humanity. The gift of story is the opportunity to live lives beyond
our own, to desire and struggle in a myriad of worlds and times, at
all the various depths of our being.

Empathy, therefore, is absolute, while sympathy is optional.
We've all met likable people who don’t draw our compassion. A
protagonist, accordingly, may or may not be pleasant. Unaware of
the difference between sympathy and empathy, some writers auto¬
matically devise nice-guy heroes, fearing that if the star role isn’t
nice, the audience won’t relate. Uncountable commercial disasters,
however, have starred charming protagonists. Likability is no guar¬
antee of audience involvement; it’s merely an aspect of characteri¬
zation. The audience identifies with deep character, with innate
qualities revealed through choice under pressure.

At first glance creating empathy does not seem difficult. The pro¬
tagonist is a human being; the audience is full of human beings. As
the filmgoer looks up on the screen, he recognizes the character's
humanity, senses that he shares it, identifies with the protagonist,
and dives into the story. Indeed, in the hands of the greatest writers,
even the most unsympathetic character can be made empathetic.

Macbeth, for example, viewed objectively, is monstrous. He
butchers a kindly old King while the man is sleeping, a King who
had never done Macbeth any harm—in fact, that very day he'd
given Macbeth a royal promotion. Macbeth then murders two ser¬
vants of the King to blame the deed on them. He kills his best
friend. Finally he orders the assassination of the wife and infant
children of his enemy. He’s a ruthless killer; yet, in Shakespeare’s
hands he becomes a tragic, empathetic hero.

The Bard accomplished this feat by giving Macbeth a con¬
science. As he wanders in soliloquy, wondering, agonizing, “Why
am I doing this? What kind of a man am I?” the audience listens
and thinks, “What kind? Guilt-ridden . . . just like me. I feel bad
when I'm thinking about doing bad things. I feel awful when I do
them and afterward there’s no end to the guilt. Macbeth is a

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY 4 143

human being; he has a conscience just like mine." In fact, we’re so
drawn to Macbeth’s writhing soul, we feel a tragic loss when at
climax Macduff decapitates him. Macbeth is a breathtaking display
of the godlike power of the writer to find an empathetic center in
an otherwise contemptible character.

On the other hand, in recent years many films, despite otherwise
splendid qualities, have crashed on these rocks because they failed to
create an audience bond, fust one example of many: INTERVIEW
WITH A VAMPIRE. The audience’s reaction to Brad Pitt’s Louis went
like this: “If I were Louis, caught in his hell-after-death, I'd end it in a
flash. Bad luck he’s a vampire. Wouldn’t wish that on anybody. But if
he finds it revolting to suck the life out of innocent victims, if he hates
himself for turning a child into a devil, if he’s tired of rat blood, he
should take this simple solution: Wait for sunrise, and poof, it’s over.”
Although Anne Rice’s novel steered us through Louis’s thoughts and
feelings until we fell into empathy with him, the dispassionate eye of
the camera sees him for what he is, a whining fraud. Audiences
always disassociate themselves from hypocrites.

THE FIRST STEP

When you sit down to write, the musing begins: “How to start?
What would my character do?”

Your character, indeed all characters, in the pursuit of any desire,
at any moment in story, will always take the minimum, conservative
action from his point of view. All human beings always do. Humanity
is fundamentally conservative, as indeed is all of nature. No
organism ever expends more energy than necessary, risks anything it
doesn’t have to, or takes any action unless it must. Why should it? If
a task can be done in an easy way without risk of loss or pain, or the
expenditure of energy, why would any creature do the more difficult,
dangerous, or enervating thing? It won’t. Nature doesn’t allow it. . .
and human nature is just an aspect of universal nature.

In life we often see people, even animals, acting with extreme
behavior that seems unnecessary, if not stupid. But this is our
objective view of their situation. Subjectively, from within the expe-

144 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

rience of the creature, this apparently intemperate action was min¬
imal, conservative, and necessary. What’s thought “conservative,”
after all, is always relative to point of view.

For example: If a normal person wanted to get into a house,
he’d take the minimum and conservative action. He'd knock on the
door, thinking, “If I knock, the door’ll be opened. I’ll be invited in
and that’ll be a positive step toward my desire.” A martial arts hero,
however, as a conservative first step, might karate-chop the door to
splinters, feeling that this is prudent and minimal.

What is necessary but minimal and conservative is relative to
the point of view of each character at each precise moment. In life,
for example, I say to myself: “If I cross the street now, that car’s far
enough away for the driver to see me in time, slow down if needed,
and I’ll get across.” Or: “I can’t find Dolores’s phone number. But I
know that my friend Jack has it in his Rolodex. If I call him in the
midst of his busy day, because he’s my friend, he’ll interrupt what
he’s doing and give me the number.”

In other words, in life we take an action consciously or uncon¬
sciously (and life is spontaneous most of the time as we open our
mouths or take a step), thinking or sensing within to this effect: “If in
these circumstances I take this minimum, conservative action, the
world will react to me in a fashion that will be a positive step toward
getting me what I want.” And in life, 99 percent of the time we are
right. The driver sees you in time, taps the brakes, and you reach the
other side safely. You call Jack and apologize for interrupting him. He
says, “No problem,” and gives you the number. This is the great mass
of experience, hour by hour, in life. BUT NEVER, EVER IN A STORY.

The grand difference between story and life is that in story we
cast out the minutiae of daily existence in which human beings
take actions expecting a certain enabling reaction from the world,
and, more or less, get what they expect.

In story, we concentrate on that moment, and only
that moment, in which a character takes an action
expecting a useful reaction from his world, but instead
the effect of his action is to provoke forces of antago-

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY 4 M 5

nism. The world of the character reacts differently than
expected, more powerfully than expected, or both.

I pick up the phone, call Jack, and say: “Sorry to bother you, but
I can’t find Dolores’s phone number. Could you—” and he shouts:
“Dolores? Dolores! How dare you ask me for her number?” and
slams down the phone. Suddenly, life is interesting.

THE WORLD OF A CHARACTER

This chapter seeks the substance of story as seen from the perspective
of a writer who in his imagination has placed himself at the very center
of the character he’s creating. The “center” of a human being, that irre¬
ducible particularity of the innermost self, is the awareness you cany
with you twenty-four hours a day that watches you do everything you
do, that chides you when you get things wrong, or compliments you on
those rare occasions when you get things right. It’s that deep observer
that comes to you when you’re going through the most agonizing expe¬
rience of your life, collapsed on the floor, crying your heart out. . . that
little voice that says, “Your mascara is running.” This inner eye is
you: your identity, your ego, the conscious focus of your being. Every¬
thing outside this subjective core is the objective world of a character.

A character’s world can be imagined as a series of concentric
circles surrounding a core of raw identity or awareness, circles that
mark the levels of conflict in a character’s life. The inner circle or
level is his own self and conflicts arising from the elements of his
nature: mind, body, emotion.

When, for example, a character takes an action, his mind may
not react the way he anticipates. His thoughts may not be as quick,
as insightful, as witty as he expected. His body may not react as he
imagined. It may not be strong enough or deft enough for a partic¬
ular task. And we all know how emotions betray us. So the closest
circle of antagonism in the world of a character is his own being:
feelings and emotions, mind and body, all or any of which may or
may not react from one moment to the next the way he expects. As
often as not, we are our own worst enemies.

146 4 ROBERT MCKEE

THE THREE LEVELS OF CONFLICT

The second circle inscribes personal relationships, unions of
intimacy deeper than the social role. Social convention assigns the
outer roles we play. At the moment, for example, we’re playing
teacher/student. Someday, however, our paths may cross and we
may decide to change our professional relationship to friendship.
In the same manner, parent/child begins as social roles that may
or may not go deeper than that. Many of us go through life in
parent/child relationships that never deepen beyond social defini¬
tions of authority and rebellion. Not until we set the conventional
role aside do we find the true intimacy of family, friends, and
lovers—who then do not react the way we expect and become the
second level of personal conflict.

The third circle marks the level of extra-personal conflict —

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY + 147

all the sources of antagonism outside the personal: conflict with
social institutions and individuals—govemment/citizen, church/
worshipper; corporation/client; conflict with individuals—cop/
criminal/victim, boss/worker, customer/waiter, doctor/patient; and
conflict with both man-made and natural environments—time,
space, and every object in it.

THE GAP

STORY is born in that place where the subjective and

objective realms touch.

The protagonist seeks an object of desire beyond his reach. Con¬
sciously or unconsciously he chooses to take a particular action,
motivated by the thought or feeling that this act will cause the
world to react in a way that will be a positive step toward achieving
his desire. From his subjective point of view the action he has
chosen seems minimal, conservative, yet sufficient to effect the
reaction he wants. But the moment he takes this action, the objec¬
tive realm of his inner life, personal relationships, or extra-personal
world, or a combination of these, react in a way that’s more pow¬
erful or different than he expected.

148 4 ROBERT MCKEE

This reaction from his world blocks his desire, thwarting him
and bending him further from his desire than he was before he took
this action. Rather than evoking cooperation from his world, his
action provokes forces of antagonism that open up the gap between
his subjective expectation and the objective result, between what he
thought would happen when he took his action and what in fact
does happen between his sense of probability and true necessity.

Every human being acts, from one moment to the next, know¬
ingly or unknowingly, on his sense of probability, on what he
expects, in all likelihood, to happen when he takes an action. We all
walk this earth thinking, or at least hoping, that we understand
ourselves, our intimates, society, and the world. We behave
according to what we believe to be the truth of ourselves, the people
around us, and the environment. But this is a truth we cannot
know absolutely. It’s what we believe to be true.

We also believe we're free to make any decision whatsoever to
take any action whatsoever. But every choice and action we make
and take, spontaneous or deliberate, is rooted in the sum total of
our experience, in what has happened to us in actuality, imagina¬
tion, or dream to that moment. We then choose to act based on
what this gathering of life tells us will be the probable reaction
from our world. It’s only then, when we take action, that we dis¬
cover necessity.

Necessity is absolute truth. Necessity is what in fact happens
when we act. This truth is known —and can only be known —when
we take action into the depth and breadth of our world and brave
its reaction. This reaction is the truth of our existence at that pre¬
cise moment, no matter what we believed the moment before.
Necessity is what must and does actually happen, as opposed to
probability, which is what we hope or expect to happen.

As in life, so in fiction. When objective necessity contradicts a
character’s sense of probability, a gap suddenly cracks open in the
fictional reality. This gap is the point where the subjective and
objective realms collide, the difference between anticipation and
result, between the world as the character perceived it before acting
and the truth he discovers in action.

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY + 149

Once the gap in reality splits open, the character, being willful
and having capacity, senses or realizes that he cannot get what he
wants in a minimal, conservative way. He must gather himself and
struggle through this gap to take a second action. This next action
is something the character would not have wanted to do in the first
case because it not only demands more willpower and forces him
to dig more deeply into his human capacity, but most important,
the second action puts him at risk. He now stands to lose in order to
gain.

ON RISK

We'd all like to have our cake and eat it too. In a state of jeopardy,
on the other hand, we must risk something that we want or have in
order to gain something else that we want or to protect something
we have—a dilemma we strive to avoid.

Here’s a simple test to apply to any story. Ask: What is the risk?
What does the protagonist stand to lose if he does not get what he
wants? More specifically, what’s the worst thing that will happen to
the protagonist if he does not achieve his desire?

If this question cannot be answered in a compelling way, the
story is misconceived at its core. For example, if the answer is:
“Should the protagonist fail, life would go back to normal,” this
story is not worth telling. What the protagonist wants is of no real
value, and a story of someone pursuing something of little or no
value is the definition of boredom.

Life teaches that the measure of the value of any human desire
is in direct proportion to the risk involved in its pursuit. The higher
the value, the higher the risk. We give the ultimate values to those
things that demand the ultimate risks—our freedom, our lives, our
souls. This imperative of risk, however, is far more than an aes¬
thetic principle, it’s rooted in the deepest source of our art. For we
not only create stories as metaphors for life, we create them as
metaphors for meaningful life—and to live meaningfully is to be at
perpetual risk.

Examine your own desires. What’s true of you will be true of

150 * ROBERT MCKEE

every character you write. You wish to write for the cinema, the
foremost media of creative expression in the world today; you wish
to give us works of beauty and meaning that help shape our vision
of reality; in return you would like to be acknowledged. It's a noble
ambition and a grand achievement to fulfill. And because you’re a
serious artist, you’re willing to risk vital aspects of your life to live
that dream.

You’re willing to risk time. You know that even the most talented
writers—Oliver Stone, Lawrence Kasdan, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala—
didn’t find success until they were in their thirties or forties, and just
as it takes a decade or more to make a good doctor or teacher, it takes
ten or more years of adult life to find something to say that tens of
millions of people want to hear, and ten or more years and often as
many screenplays written and unsold to master this demanding craft.

You’re willing to risk money. You know that if you were to take
the same hard work and creativity that goes into a decade of unsold
screenplays and apply it to a normal profession, you could retire
before you see your first script on the screen.

You’re willing to risk people. Each morning you go to your desk
and enter the imagined world of your characters. You dream and
write until the sun’s setting and your head's throbbing. So you turn
off your word processor to be with the person you love. Except that,
while you can turn off your machine, you can’t turn off your imagi¬
nation. As you sit at dinner, your characters are still running
through your head and you’re wishing there was a notepad next to
your plate. Sooner or later, the person you love will say: "You know
. . . you’re not really here.” Which is true. Half the time you’re
somewhere else, and no one wants to live with somebody who isn’t
really there.

The writer places time, money, and people at risk because his
ambition has life-defining force. What’s true for the writer is true
for every character he creates:

The measure of the value of a character's desire is in
direct proportion to the risk he's willing to take to
achieve it; the greater the value, the greater the risk.

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY * 151

THE GAP IN PROGRESSION

The protagonist's first action has aroused forces of antagonism that
block his desire and spring open a gap between anticipation and
result, disconfirming his notions of reality, putting him in greater
conflict with his world, at even greater risk. But the resilient
human mind quickly remakes reality into a larger pattern that
incorporates this disconfirmation, this unexpected reaction. Now
he takes a second, more difficult and risk-taking action, an action
consistent with his revised vision of reality, an action based on his
new expectations of the world. But again his action provokes forces

152 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

of antagonism, splitting open a gap in his reality. So he adjusts to
the unexpected, ups the ante yet again and decides to take an action
that he feels is consistent with his amended sense of things. He
reaches even more deeply into his capacities and willpower, puts
himself at greater risk, and takes a third action.

Perhaps this action achieves a positive result, and for the
moment he takes a step toward his desire, but with his next action,
the gap will again spring open. Now he must take an even more
difficult action that demands even more willpower, more capacity,
and more risk. Over and over again in a progression, rather than
cooperation, his actions provoke forces of antagonism, opening
gaps in his reality. This pattern repeats on various levels to the end
of the line, to a final action beyond which the audience cannot
imagine another.

These cracks in moment-to-moment reality mark the difference
between the dramatic and the prosaic, between action and activity.
True action is physical, vocal, or mental movement that opens gaps
in expectation and creates significant change. Mere activity is
behavior in which what is expected happens, generating either no
change or trivial change.

But the gap between expectation and result is far more than a
matter of cause and effect. In the most profound sense, the break
between the cause as it seemed and the effect as it turns out marks
the point where the human spirit and the world meet. On one side is
the world as we believe it to be, on the other is reality as it actually is.
In this gap is the nexus of story, the caldron that cooks our tellings.
Here the writer finds the most powerful, life-bending moments. The
only way we can reach this crucial junction is by working from the
inside out.

WRITING FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Why must we do this? Why during the creation of a scene must we
find our way to the center of each character and experience it from
his point of view? What do we gain when we do? What do we sacri¬
fice if we don’t?

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY « 153

Like anthropologists, we could, for example, discover social and
environmental truths through careful observations. Like note¬
taking psychologists, we could find behavioral truths. We could, by
working from the outside in, render a surface of character that’s
genuine, even fascinating. But the one crucial dimension we would
not create is emotional truth.

The only reliable source of emotional truth is yourself. If you
stay outside your characters, you inevitably write emotional cliches.
To create revealing human reactions, you must not only get inside
your character, but get inside yourself. So, how to do this? How, as
you sit at your desk, do you crawl inside the head of your character
to feel your heart pounding, your palms sweating, a knot in your
belly, tears in your eyes, laughter in your heart, sexual arousal,
anger, outrage, compassion, sadness, joy, or any of the uncountable
responses along the spectrum of human emotions?

You’ve determined that a certain event must take place in your
story, a situation to be progressed and turned. How to write a scene
of insightful emotions? You could ask: How should someone take this
action? But that leads to cliches and moralizing. Or you could ask:
How might someone do this? But that leads to writing “cute”—clever
but dishonest. Or: “If my character were in these circumstances,
what would he do?” But that puts you at a distance, picturing your
character walking the stage of his life, guessing at his emotions, and
guesses are invariably cliches. Or you could ask: “If I were in these
circumstances, what would I do?” As this question plays on your
imagination, it may start your heart pounding, but obviously you’re
not the character. Although it may be an honest emotion for you,
your character might do the reverse. So what do you do?

You ask: “If I were this character in these circumstances, what
would I do?” Using Stanislavski’s “Magic if,” you act the role. It is
no accident that many of the greatest playwrights from Euripides to
Shakespeare to Pinter, and screenwriters from D. W. Griffith to
Ruth Gordon to John Sayles were also actors. Writers are improvi-
sationalists who perform sitting at their word processors, pacing
their rooms, acting all their characters: man, woman, child, mon¬
ster. We act in our imaginations until honest, character-specific

154 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

emotions flow in our blood. When a scene is emotionally mean¬
ingful to us, we can trust that it’ll be meaningful to the audience.
By creating work that moves us, we move them.

CHINATOWN

To illustrate writing from the inside out, I’ll use one of the most
famous and brilliantly written scenes in film, the second act climax
of CHINATOWN by screenwriter Robert Towne. I’ll work from the
scene as performed on screen, but it can also be found in the third
draft of Towne’s screenplay, dated October 9,1973.

Synopsis

Private detective J. J. Gittes is investigating the death of Hollis Mul-
wray, commissioner of the Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power. Mulwray has apparently drowned in a reservoir, and the
crime baffles Gittes’s rival, Police Lieutenant Escobar. Near the end
of the Act Two, Gittes has narrowed suspects and motives to two:
either a conspiracy of millionaires led by the ruthless Noah Cross
killed Mulwray for political power and riches; or Evelyn Mulwray
killed her husband in a jealous rage after he was found with
another woman.

Gittes follows Evelyn to a house in Santa Monica. Peering
through a window, he sees the “other woman,’’ seemingly drugged
and held prisoner. When Evelyn comes out to her car, he forces her
to talk and she claims that the woman is her sister. Gittes knows
she doesn't have a sister, but for the moment says nothing.

The next morning he discovers what appears to be the dead
man’s eyeglasses in a salt water pond at the Mulwray home in the
hills above L.A. Now he knows how and where the man was killed.
With this evidence he goes back to Santa Monica to confront
Evelyn and turn her over to Escobar, who's threatening to pull
Gittes’s private investigator's license.

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY 4 155

CHARACTERS

J. J. GITTES, while working for the district attorney, fell in love
with a woman in Chinatown and while trying to help her somehow
caused her death. He resigned and became a PI, hoping to escape
corrupt politics and his tragic past. But now he's drawn back into
both. What's worse, he finds himself in this predicament because,
days before the murder, he was duped into investigating Mulwray
for adultery. Someone’s made a fool of Gittes and he’s a man of
excessive pride. Behind his cool demeanor is an impulsive risk-
taker; his sarcastic cynicism masks an idealist’s hunger for justice.
To further complicate matters, he’s fallen in love with Evelyn Mul¬
wray. Gittes’s scene objective: to find the truth.

EVELYN MULWRAY is the victim’s wife and daughter of Noah
Cross. She’s nervous and defensive when questioned about her
husband; she stammers when her father is mentioned. She is, we
sense, a woman with something to hide. She has hired Gittes to
look into the murder of her husband, perhaps to conceal her own
guilt. During the investigation, however, she seems drawn to him.
After a close escape from some thugs, they make love. Evelyn’s
scene objective: to hide her secret and escape with Katherine.

KHAN is Evelyn’s servant. Now that she’s widowed, he also
sees himself as her bodyguard. He prides himself on his digni¬
fied manner and ability to handle difficult situations. Khan's
scene objective: to protect evelyn.

KATHERINE is a shy innocent who has lead a very protected
life. Katherine’s scene objective: to obey evelyn.

THE SCENE:

ENT./ EXT. SANTA MONICA—BUICK—MOVING—DAY

Gittes drives through Los Angeles.

To work from the inside out , slip in Gittes’ mind while he
drives to Evelyn’s hideaway. Imagine yourself in Gittes '

156 4 ROBERT MCKEE

pov. As the streets roll past, you ask:

“If I were Gittes at this moment, what would I do?”

Letting your imagination roam, the answer comes:

“Rehearse. I always rehearse in my head before taking on
life’s big confrontations.”

Now work deeper into Gittes’s emotions and psyche:

Hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, thoughts
racing: “She killed him, then used me. She lied to me, came
on to me. Man, I fell for her. My guts are in a knot, but I’ll
be cool. I’ll stroll to the door, step in and accuse her. She
lies. I send for the cops. She plays innocent, a few tears.
But I stay ice cold, show her Mulwray’s glasses, then lay
out how she did it, step by step, as if I was there. She con¬
fesses. I turn her over to Escobar; I’m off the hook.”

EXT. BUNGALOW-SANTA MONICA

Gittes’ car speeds into the driveway.

You continue working from inside Gittes ’ pov, thinking:

“I’ll be cool, I’ll be cool. . .” Suddenly, with the sight of her
house, an image of Evelyn flashes in your imagination. A
rush of anger. A gap cracks open between your cool resolve
and your fury.

The Buick SCREECHES to a halt. Gittes jumps out.

“To hell with her!”

Gittes SLAMS the car door and bolts up the steps.

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY + 157

“Grab her now, before she runs.”

He twists the door knob, find it locked, then BANGS on the door.

“Goddamn it.”

INT. BUNGALOW

KHAN, Evelyn’s Chinese servant, hears POUNDING and heads
for the door.

As characters enter and exit, shift back and forth in your
imagination, taking the pov of one, then the other. Moving
to Khan’s point of view, ask yourself:

“If I were Khan at this moment, what would I think, feel, do?”

As you settle into this character’s psyche, your thoughts
run to:

“Who the hell’s that?” Paste on a butler’s smile. “Ten to
one it’s that loud mouth detective again. I’ll handle him.”

Khan unlocks the door and finds Gittes on the step.

KHAN

You wait.

Shifting back into Gittes’ mind:

“That snotty butler again.”

GITTES

You wait. Chow hoy kye dye!

(translation: Puck
off, punk)

158 « ROBERT MCKEE

Gittes shoves Khan aside and pushes into the house.

As you switch back to Khan, the sudden gap between
expectation and result inverts your smile:

Confusion, anger. “He not only barges in but insults me in
Cantonese! Throw him out!”

Gittes looks up as Evelyn appears on the stairs behind Khan,
nervously adjusting her necklace as she descends.

As Khan:

“It’s Mrs. Mulwray. Protect her!”

Evelyn has been calling Gittes all morning, hoping to get
his help. After packing for hours, she’s in a hell-bent rush
to catch the 5:30 train to Mexico. You shift to her pov:

“If I were Evelyn in this situation, what would I do?”

Now find your way to the heart of this very complex woman:

“It’s Jake. T hank God. I know he cares. He’ll help me. How
do I look?” Hands instinctively flutter to hair, face. “Khan
looks worried.”

Evelyn smiles reassuringly to Khan and gestures for him to
leave.

EVELYN

It’s all right, Khan.

As Evelyn turning back to Gittes:

Feeling more confident. “Now I’m not alone.”

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY 4 159

EVELYN

How are you? I’ve been
calling you.

INT. LIVING ROOM—SAME

Gittes turns away and steps into the living room.

As Gittes:

“She’s so beautiful. Don’t look at her. Stay tough, man. Be
ready. She’ll tell lie on lie.”

GITTES

. . . Yeah?

Evelyn follows, searching his face.

As Evelyn:

“I can’t get his eye. Something’s bothering him. He looks
exhausted...”

EVELYN

Did you get some sleep?

GITTES

Sure.

“. . . and hungry, poor man.”

EVELYN

Have you had lunch? Khan
can fix you something.

l6o ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

As Gittes:

“What’s this lunch bullshit? Do it now.”

GITTES

Where’s the girl?

Back in Evelyn’s thoughts as a gap in expectation hies
open with a shock:

“Why’s he asking that? What’s gone wrong? Keep calm.
Feign innocence.”

EVELYN
Upstairs, why?

As Gittes:

“The soft voice, the innocent ‘why?’ Keep cool.”

GITTES

I want to see her.

As Evelyn:

“What does he want with Katherine? No. I can’t let him see
her now. Lie. Find out first.”

EVELYN

. . . She’s having a bath now.

Why do you want to see her?

As Gittes:

Disgusted with her lies. “Don’t let her get to ya.”

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY « 161

Gittes looks around the room and sees half-packed suitcases.

“She’s making a run for it. Good thing I got here. Keep
sharp. She’ll lie again.”

GITTES

Going somewhere?

As Evelyn:

“Should have told him, but there wasn’t time. Can’t hide it.
Tell the truth. He’ll understand.”

EVELYN

Yes, we have a 5:30 train to
catch.

As Gittes, a minor gap opens:

“What do ya know? Sounds honest. Doesn’t matter. Put an
end to her bullshit. Let her know you mean business.
Where’s the phone? There.”

Gittes picks up the telephone.

As Evelyn:

Bewilderment, choking fear. “Who’s he calling?”

EVELYN

Jake . . . ?

“He’s dialing. God, help me . . . ”

162 + ROBERT MCKEE

As Oittes , ear to the phone:

“Answer, da mn it.” Hearing the desk sergeant pick up.

GITTES

J. J. Gittes for Lt. Escobar.

As Evelyn:

“The police!” A rush of adrenaline hits. Panic. “No, no.
Keep calm. Keep calm. It must he about Hollis. But I can’t
wait. We have to leave now.”

EVELYN

Look, what’s the matter?

What’s wrong? I told you
we’ve got a 5:30 train—

As Gittes:

“Enough! Shut her up.”

GITTES

You’re gonna miss your train,
(into phone)

Lou, meet me at 1972 Canyon
Drive . . . yeah, soon as you
can.

As Evelyn:

Anger rises. “The fool...” A shred of hope. “But maybe
he’s calling the police to help me.”

EVELYN
Why did you do that?

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY « 163

As Gittes:

Smug satisfaction. “She’s trying to get tough, but I’ve got
her now. Feels good. I’m right at home.”

GITTES

(tossing his hat on
the table)

You know any good criminal
lawyers?

As Evelyn, trying to close an ever-widening gap:

“Lawyers? What the hell does he mean?” A chilling fear of
something terrible about to happen.

EVELYN

No.

As Gittes:

“Look at her, cool and collected, playing it innocent to the
end.”

GITTES

(taking out a silver
cigarette case)

Don’t worry. I can recommend
a couple. They’re expensive,
but you can afford it.

Gittes calmly takes a lighter from his pocket, sits down and
lights a cigarette.

164 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

As Evelyn:

“My God, he’s threatening me. I slept with him. Look at
him swagger. Who does he think he is?” Throat tightens in
anger. “Don’t panic. Handle it. There must he a reason for
this.”

EVELYN

Will you please tell me what
this is all about?

As Gittes:

“Pissed off, are ya? Good. Watch this.”

Gittes slips the cigarette lighter back into his pocket and with
the same motion brings out a wrapped handkerchief. He sets
it on the table and carefully pulls back the four corners of the
cloth to reveal the eyeglasses.

GITTES

I found these in your back¬
yard in the pond. They
belonged to your husband,
didn’t they . . . didn’t they?

As Evelyn:

The gap refuses to close. Dazed. Nothing makes sense. A
rising dread. “Glasses? In Hollis’ fish pond? What’s he
after?”

EVELYN

I don’t know. Yes, probably.

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY + 165

As Gittes:

“An opening. Get her now. Make her confess.”

GITTES
(jumping up)

Yes, positively. That’s where
he was drowned.

As Evelyn:

Stunned. “At home?!”

EVELYN

What?!

As Gittes:

Fury. “Make her talk. Now!”

GITTES

There’s no time to he shocked
by the truth. The coroner’s
report proves that he had salt
water in his lungs when he
was killed. Just take my word
for it, all right? Now I want to
know how it happened, and I
want to know why, and I
want to know before Escobar
gets here because I don’t
want to lose my license.

l 66 4 ROBERT MCKEE

As Evelyn:

His sneering) livid face pushes into yours. Chaos, para¬
lyzing fear, grasping for control.

EVELYN

I don’t know what you are
talking about. This is the
craziest, the most insane
thing . . .

GITTES

Stop it!

As Gittes:

Losing control, hands shoot out, grasp her, fingers digging
in, m a k i n g her wince. But then the look of shock and pain
in her eyes brings a stab of compassion. A gap opens. Feel¬
ings for her struggle against the rage. Hands drop. “She’s
hurting. Come on, man, she didn’t do it in cold blood, could
happen to anybody. Give her a chance. Lay it out, point by
point, but get the truth out of her!”

GITTES

I’m gonna make it easy for
you. You were jealous, you
had a fight, he fell, hit his
head ... it was an accident
. . . but his girl’s a witness. So
you had to shut her up. You
don’t have the guts to harm
her, but you’ve got the money
to shut her mouth. Yes or no?

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY + 167

As Evelyn:

The gap crashes shut with a horrible meaning: “My God, he
thinks I did it!”

EVELYN

No!

As Gittes, hearing her emphatic answer:

“Good. Finally sounds like the truth.” Cooling off. “But
what the hell’s going on?”

GITTES

Who is she? And don’t give
me that crap about a sister
because you don’t have a
sister.

As Evelyn:

The greatest shock of all splits you in two: “He wants to
know who she is ... God help me.” Weak with years of car¬
rying the secret. Back to wall. “If I don’t tell him , he’ll call
the police, but if I do . . .” No place to turn . . . except to
Gittes.

EVELYN

I’ll tell you ... I’ll tell you the
truth.

As Gittes:

Confident. Focused. “At last.”

l68 « ROBERT MCKEE

GITTES

Good. What’s her name?

As Evelyn:

“Her name. . . . Dear God, her name . . . ”

EVELYN
. . . Katherine.

GITTES

Katherine who?

As Evelyn:

Bracing for the worst. “Tell it all. See if he can take it... if
I can take it... ”

EVELYN

She’s my daughter.

Back in Gittes pov as the expectation of finally prying
loose her confession explodes:

“Another goddamned lie!”

Gittes lashes out and slaps her flush across the face.

As Evelyn:

Searing pain. Numbness. The paralysis that comes from a
life time of guilt.

GITTES

I said the truth.

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY + 169

She stands passively, offering herself to be hit again.

EVELYN

She’s my sistei^—

As Gittes:

slapping her again. . .

EVELYN
—she’s my daughter—

As Evelyn:

Feeling nothing tout a letting go.

As Gittes:

.. . hitting her yet again, seeing her tears. ..

EVELYN

—my sister—

. . . slapping her even harder. . .

EVELYN

—my daughter, my sister—

.. . backhand, open fist, grasp her, hurl her into a sofa.

GITTES

I said I want the truth.

170 + ROBERT MCKEE

As Evelyn:

At first his assault seems miles away, hut slamming
against the sofa jolts you back to the now, and you scream
out words you’ve never said to anyone:

EVELYN

She’s my sister and my
daughter.

As Gittes:

A blinding gap! Dumbfounded. Fury ebbs away as the gap
slowly closes and you absorb the terrible implications
behind her words.

Suddenly, Khan POUNDS down the stairs.

As Khan:

Ready to fight to protect her.

As Evelyn , suddenly remembering:

“Katherine! Sweet Jesus, did she hear me?”

EVELYN

(quickly to Kahn)

Khan, please, go back.

For God’s sake, keep her
upstairs. Go back.

Khan gives Gittes a hard look, then retreats upstairs.

As Evelyn , turning to see the frozen expression on Gittes’
face:

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY + 171

An odd sense of pity for him. “Poor man... still doesn’t get
it.”

EVELYN

. . . my father and I . . .
understand? Or is it too tough
for you?

Evelyn drops her head to her knees and sobs.

As Gittes:

A wave of compassion. “Cross. . . that sick bastard...”

GITTES

(quietly)

He raped you?

As Evelyn:

Images of you and your father, so many years ago.
Crushing guilt. But no more lies:

Evelyn shakes her head “no.”

This is the location of a critical rewrite. In the third draft
Evelyn explains at great length that her mother died when
she was fifteen and her father’s grief was such that he
had a “breakdown” and became “ a httle boy,” unable to
feed or dress h im self. This led to incest between them.
Unable to face what he had done, her father then turned
his back on her. This exposition not only slowed the pace
of the scene, but more importantly, it seriously weakened
the power of the antagonist, giving him a sympathetic vul¬
nerability. It was cut and replaced by Gittes’ “He raped
you?” and Evelyn’s denial—a brilliant stroke that main-

172 + ROBERT MCKEE

tains Cross's cruel core, and severely tests Gittes’ love for
Evelyn.

This opens at least two possible explanations for why
Evelyn denies she was raped: Children often have a self¬
destructive need to protect their parents. It could well have
been rape, but even now she cannot bring herself to accuse
her father. Or was she complicit. Her mother was dead,
making her the “woman of the house.” In those circum¬
stances, incest between father and daughter is not
unknown. That, however, doesn’t excuse Cross. The respon¬
sibility is his in either case, but Evelyn has punished herself
with guilt. Her denial forces Gittes to face character defining
choices: whether or not to continue loving this woman,
whether or not to turn her over to the police for murder.
Her denial contradicts his expectation and a void opens:

As Gittes:

“If she wasn’t raped ... ?” Confusion. “There must be
more.”

GITTES

Then what happened?

As Evelyn:

Flashing memories of the shock of being pregnant, your
father’s sneering face, fleeing to Mexico, the agony of
giving birth, a foreign clinic, loneliness . . .

EVELYN
I ran away . . .

GITTES

. . . to Mexico.

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY + 173

As Evetyn:

Remembering when Hollis found you in Mexico, proudly
showing him Katherine, grief as your child is taken from
you, the faces of the nuns, the sound of Katherine crying...

EVELYN
(nodding “yes”)

Hollis came and took care of
me. I couldn’t see her ... I
was fifteen. I wanted to but I
couldn’t. Then . . .

Images of your joy at getting Katherine to Los Angeles to be
with you, of keeping her safe from your father, but then
sudden fear: “He must never And her. He’s mad. I know
what he wants. If he gets his hands on my child, he’s going
to do it again.”

EVELYN

(a pleading look to
Gittes)

Now I want to be with her.

I want to take care of her.

As Gittes:

“I’ve finally got the truth.” Feeling the gap close, and with
it, a growing love for her. Pity for all she’s suffered, respect
for her courage and devotion to the child. “Let her go. No,
better yet, get her out of town yourself. She’ll never make
it on her own. And, man, you owe it to her.”

GITTES

Where are you gonna take
her now?

174 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

As Evelyn:

Rush of hope. “What does he mean? Will he help?”

EVELYN
Back to Mexico.

As Gittes:

Wheels turning. “How to get her past Escobar?”

GITTES

Well, you can’t take the train.
Escobar’ll be looking for you
everywhere.

As Evelyn:

Disbelief. Elation. “He is going to help me!”

EVELYN

How . . . how about a plane?

GITTES

No, that’s worse. You better
just get out of here, leave all
this stuff here.

(beat)

Where does Kahn live? Get
the exact address.

EVELYN

All right . . .

Light glints off the glasses on the table, catching Evelyn’s eye.

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY « 175

As Evelyn:

“Those glasses ...” An image of Hollis reading . . . without
glasses.

EVELYN

Those didn’t belong to Hollis.

GITTES

How do you know?

EVELYN

He didn’t wear bifocals.

She goes upstairs as Gittes stares down at the glasses.

As Gittes:

“If not Mulwray’s glasses ... ? A gap breaks open. One
last piece of truth yet to find. Memory rewinds and flashes
back to . .. lunch with Noah Cross, and him peering over
bifocals, eyeing the head of a broiled fish. The gap snaps
shut. “Cross killed Mulwray because his son-in-law
wouldn’t tell him where his daughter by his daughter was
hiding. Cross wants the kid. But he won’t get her because
I’ve got the evidence to nail him... in my pocket.”

Gittes carefully tucks the bifocals into his vest, then looks up to
see Evelyn on the stairs with her arm around a shy teenager.

“Lovely. Like her mother. A little scared. Must have heard
us.”

EVELYN

Katherine, say hello to Mister
Gittes.

176 4 ROBERT MCKEE

You move into Katherine's pov:

If I were Katherine in this moment, what would 1 feel?

As Katherine:

Anxious. Flustered. “Mother’s been crying. Did this man
hurt her? She’s smiling at him. I guess it’s okay.”

KATHERINE

Hello.

GITTES

Hello.

Evelyn gives her daughter a reassuring look and sends her
back upstairs.

EVELYN
(to Gittes)

He lives at 1712 Alameda. Do
you know where that is?

GITTES

Sure . . .

As Gittes:

A last gap opens, flooded with images of a woman you once
loved and her violent death on Alameda in Chinatown.
Feelings of dread, of life coming full circle. The gap slowly
closes with the thought, “This time I’ll do it right.”

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY + 177

CREATING WITHIN THE GAP

In writing out what actors call “inner monologues” I’ve put this
well-paced scene into ultra-slow motion, and given words to what
would be flights of feeling or flashes of insight. Nonetheless, that’s
how it is at the desk. It may take days, even weeks, to write what
will be minutes, perhaps seconds, on screen. We put each and
every moment under a microscope of thinking, rethinking, cre¬
ating, recreating as we weave through our characters’ moments, a
maze of unspoken thoughts, images, sensations, and emotions.

Writing from the inside out, however, does not mean that we
imagine a scene from one end to the other locked in a single char¬
acter’s point of view. Rather, as in the exercise above, the writer
shifts points of view. He settles into the conscious center of a char¬
acter and asks the question: “If I were this character in these cir¬
cumstances, what would I do?” He feels within his own emotions a
specific human reaction and imagines the character’s next action.

Now the writer’s problem is this: how to progress the scene? To
build a next beat, the writer must move out of the character's sub¬
jective point of view and take an objective look at the action he just
created. This action anticipates a certain reaction from the char¬
acter’s world. But that must not occur. Instead, the writer must pry
open the gap. To do so, he asks the question writers have been
asking themselves since time began: “What is the opposite of that ?”

Writers are by instinct dialectical thinkers. As Jean Cocteau
said, "The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction—the
breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.” You
must doubt appearances and seek the opposite of the obvious.
Don’t skim the surface, taking things at face value. Rather, peel
back the skin of life to find the hidden, the unexpected, the seem¬
ingly inappropriate—in other words, the truth. And you will find
your truth in the gap.

Remember, you are the God of your universe. You know your
characters, their minds, bodies, emotions, relationships, world.
Once you've created an honest moment from one point of view, you
move around your universe, even into the inanimate, looking for

178 4 ROBERT MCKEE

another point of view so you can invade that, create an unexpected
reaction, and splinter open the cleft between expectation and result.

Having done this, you then go back into the mind of the first
character, and find your way to a new emotional truth by asking
again: "If I were this character under these new circumstances, what
would I do?” Finding your way to that reaction and action, you then
step right out again, asking: “And what is the opposite of that?”

Fine writing emphasizes REACTIONS.

Many of the actions in any story are more or less expected. By
genre convention, the lovers in a Love Story will meet, the detective
in a Thriller will discover a crime, the protagonist’s life in an Educa¬
tion Plot will bottom out. These and other such commonplace
actions are universally known and anticipated by the audience.
Consequently, fine writing puts less stress on what happens than
on to whom it happens and why and how it happens. Indeed, the
richest and most satisfying pleasures of all are found in stories that
focus on the reactions that events cause and the insight gained.

Looking back at the CHINATOWN scene: Gittes knocks on the
door expecting to be let in. What’s the reaction he gets? Khan blocks
his way, expecting Gittes to wait. Gittes’s reaction? He shocks Khan
by insulting him in Cantonese and barging in. Evelyn comes down¬
stairs expecting Gittes’s help. The reaction to that? Gittes calls the
police, expecting to force her to confess the murder and tell the
truth about the “other woman." Reaction? She reveals that the other
woman is her daughter by incest, indicting her lunatic father for the
murder. Beat after beat, even in the quietest, most internalized of
scenes, a dynamic series of action/reaction/gap, renewed action/sur¬
prising reaction /gap builds the scene to and around its Turning
Point as reactions amaze and fascinate.

If you write a beat in which a character steps up to a door,
knocks, and waits, and in reaction the door is politely opened to
invite him in, and the director is foolish enough to shoot this, in all
probability it will never see the light of the screen. Any editor
worthy of the title would instantly scrap it, explaining to the

THE SUBSTANCE OF STORY + 179

director: “Jack, these are eight dead seconds. He knocks on the
door and it’s actually opened for him? No, we’ll cut to the sofa.
That’s the first real beat. Sorry you squandered fifty thousand dol¬
lars walking your star through a door, but it’s a pace killer and
pointless.” A “pointless pace killer” is any scene in which reactions
lack insight and imagination, forcing expectation to equal result.

Once you’ve imagined the scene, beat by beat, gap by gap, you
write. What you write is a vivid description of what happens and
the reactions it gets, what is seen, said, and done. You write so that
when someone else reads your pages he will, beat by beat, gap by
gap, live through the roller coaster of life that you lived through at
your desk. The words on the page allow the reader to plunge into
each gap, seeing what you dreamed, feeling what you felt, learning
what you understood until, like you, the reader’s pulse pounds,
emotions flow, and meaning is made.

THE SUBSTANCE AND ENERGY OF STORY

The answers to the questions that began this chapter should now
be clear. The stuff of a story is not its words. Your text must be
lucid to express the desk-bound life of your imagination and feel¬
ings. But words are not an end, they are a means, a medium. The
substance of story is the gap that splits open between what a
human being expects to happen when he takes an action and what
really does happen; the rift between expectation and result, proba¬
bility and necessity. To build a scene, we constantly break open
these breaches in reality.

As to the source of energy in story, the answer is the same: the
gap. The audience empathizes with the character, vicariously
seeking his desire. It more or less expects the world to react the
way the character expects. When the gap opens up for character, it
opens up for audience. This is the “Oh, my God!" moment, the
“Oh, no!" or “Oh, yes!” you’ve experienced again and again in well-
crafted stories.

The next time you go to the movies, sit in the front row at the
wall, so you can watch an audience watch a film. It’s very instruc-

l 8 o + ROBERT MCKEE

tive: Eyebrows fly up, mouths drop open, bodies flinch and rock,
laughter explodes, tears run down faces. Every time the gap splits
open for character, it opens for audience. With each turn, the char¬
acter must pour more energy and effort into his next action. The
audience, in empathy with the character, feels the same surges of
energy building beat by beat through the film.

As a charge of electricity leaps from pole to pole in a magnet, so
the spark of life ignites across the gap between the self and reality.
With this flash of energy we ignite the power of story and move the
heart of the audience.

THE INCITING INCIDENT

A story is a design in five parts: The Inciting Incident, the first
major event of the telling, is the primary cause for all that follows,
putting into motion the other four elements— Progressive Complica¬
tions, Crisis, Climax, Resolution. To understand how the Inciting
Incident enters into and functions within the work, let’s step back
to take a more comprehensive look at setting, the physical and social
world in which it occurs.

THE WORLD OF THE STORY

We’ve defined setting in terms of period, duration, location, and level
of conflict. These four dimensions frame the story’s world, but to
inspire the multitude of creative choices you need to tell an original,
cliche-free story, and you must fill that frame with a depth and
breadth of detail. Below is a list of general questions we ask of all
stories. Beyond these, each work inspires a unique list of its own,
driven by the writer’s thirst for insight.

How do my characters make a living? We spend a third or more of
our lives at work, yet rarely see scenes of people doing their jobs. The
reason is simple: Most work is boring. Perhaps not to the person
doing the work, but boring to watch. As any lawyer, cop, or doctor
knows, the vast majority of their time is spent in routine duties,
reports, and meetings that change little or nothing—the epitome of
expectation meeting result. That’s why in the professional genres—
Courtroom, Crime, Medical —we focus on only those moments when

181

I & 2 4 ROBERT MCKEE

work causes more problems than it solves. Nonetheless, to get inside
a character, we must question all aspects of their twenty-four-hour
day. Not only work, but how do they play? Pray? Make love?

What are the politics of my world ? Not necessarily politics in terms
of right-wing/left-wing, Republican/Democrat, but in the true sense
of the word: power. Politics is the name we give to the orchestration of
power in any society. Whenever human beings gather to do anything,
there's always an uneven distribution of power. In corporations, hos¬
pitals, religions, government agencies, and the like, someone at the
top has great power, people at the bottom have little or none, those in
between have some. How does a worker gain power or lose it? No
matter how we try to level inequalities, applying egalitarian theories of
all kinds, human societies are stubbornly and inherently pyramidal in
their arrangement of power. In other words, politics.

Even when writing about a household, question its politics, for
like any other social structure, a family is political. Is it a patriarchal
home where Dad has the clout, but when he leaves the house, it
transfers to Mom, then when she’s out, to the oldest child? Or is it
a matriarchal home, where Mom runs things? Or a contemporary
family in which the kid is tyrannizing his parents?

Love relationships are political. An old Gypsy expression goes:
“He who confesses first loses.” The first person to say “I love you”
has lost because the other, upon hearing it, immediately smiles a
knowing smile, realizing that he’s the one loved, so he now con¬
trols the relationship. If you’re lucky, those three little words will be
said in unison over candlelight. Or, if very, very lucky, they won’t
need to be said . . . they’ll be done.

What are the rituals of my world? In all corners of the world life
is bound up in ritual. This is a ritual, is it not? I’ve written a book
and you’re reading it. In another time and place we might sit under
a tree or take a walk, like Socrates and his students. We create a
ritual for every activity, not only for public ceremony but for our
very private rites. Heaven help the person who rearranges my orga¬
nization of toiletries around the bathroom basin.

How do your characters take meals? Eating is a different ritual
everywhere in the world. Americans, for example, according to a

THE INCITING INCIDENT + 183

recent survey, now eat 75 percent of all their meals in restaurants.
If your characters eat at home, is it an old-fashioned family that
dresses for dinner at a certain hour, or a contemporary one that
feeds from an open refrigerator?

What are the values in my world? What do my characters con¬
sider good? Evil? What do they see as right? Wrong? What are my
society’s laws? Realize that good/evil, right/wrong, and legal/illegal
don’t necessarily have anything to do with one another. What do
my characters believe is worth living for? Foolish to pursue? What
would they give their lives for?

What is the genre or combination of genres? With what conven¬
tions? As with setting, genres surround the writer with creative
limitations that must be kept or brilliantly altered.

What are the biographies of my characters? From the day they
were born to the opening scene, how has life shaped them?

What is the Backstory? This is an oft-misunderstood term. It
doesn’t mean life history or biography. Backstory is the set of signif¬
icant events that occurred in the characters’ past that the writer can
use to build his story’s progressions. Exactly how we use Backstory
to tell story will be discussed later, but for the moment note that we
do not bring characters out of a void. We landscape character
biographies, planting them with events that become a garden we’ll
harvest again and again.

What is my cast design? Nothing in a work of art is there by acci¬
dent. Ideas may come spontaneously, but we must weave them
consciously and creatively into the whole. We cannot allow any
character who comes to mind to stumble into the story and play a
part. Each role must fit a purpose, and the first principle of cast
design is polarization. Between the various roles we devise a net¬
work of contrasting or contradictory attitudes.

If the ideal cast sat down for dinner and something hap¬
pened, whether as trivial as spilled wine or as important as a
divorce announcement, from each and every character would
come a separate and distinctively different reaction. No two
would react the same because no two share the same attitude
toward anything. Each is an individual with a character-specific

184 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

view of life, and the disparate reaction of each contrasts with all
others.

If two characters in your cast share the same attitude and react
in kind to whatever occurs, you must either collapse the two into
one, or expel one from the story. When characters react the same,
you minimize opportunities for conflict. Instead, the writer's
strategy must be to maximize these opportunities.

Imagine this cast: father, mother, daughter, and a son named
Jeffrey. This family lives in Iowa. As they sit down for dinner, Jef¬
frey turns to them and says: “Mom, Dad, Sis, I've come to a big
decision. I have an airline ticket and tomorrow I’m leaving for Hol¬
lywood to pursue a career as an art director in the movies.” And all
three respond: “Oh, what a wonderful idea! Isn’t that great? Jeffs
going off to Hollywood!” And they toast him with their glasses of
milk.

CUT TO: Jeffs room, where they help him pack while admiring
his pictures on the wall, reflecting nostalgically on his days in art
school, complimenting his talent, predicting success.

CUT TO: The airport as the family puts Jeff on the plane, tears
in their eyes, embracing him: “Write when you get work, Jeff.”

Suppose, instead, Jeffrey sits down for dinner, delivers his dec¬
laration, and suddenly Dad’s fist POUNDS the table: “What the
hell are you talking about, Jeff? You’re not going off to Hollyweird
to become some art director . . . whatever an art director is. No,
you're staying right here in Davenport. Because, Jeff, as you know,
I have never done anything for myself. Not in my entire life. It’s all
for you, Jeff, for you! Granted, I’m the king of plumbing supplies
in Iowa . . . but someday, son, you’ll be emperor of plumbing sup¬
plies all over the Midwest and I won’t hear another word of this
nonsense. End of discussion.”

CUT TO: Jeff sulking in his room. His mother slips in whis¬
pering: “Don’t you listen to him. Go off to Hollywood, become an
art director . . . whatever that is. Do they win Oscars for that, Jeff?”
“Yes, Mom, they do,” Jeff says. “Good! Go off to Hollywood and
win me an Oscar and prove that bastard wrong. And you can do it,
Jeff. Because you’ve got talent. I know you’ve got talent. You got

THE INCITING INCIDENT 4 185

that from my side of the family. I used to have talent too, but I gave
it all up when I married your father, and I’ve regretted it ever since.
For God’s sake, Jeff, don’t sit here in Davenport. Hell, this town
was named after a sofa. No, go off to Hollywood and make me
proud.”

CUT TO: Jeff packing. His sister comes in, shocked, “Jeff! What
are you doing? Packing? Leaving me alone? With those two? You
know how they are. They’ll eat me alive. If you go off to Hollywood,
I’ll end up in the plumbing supply business!” Pulling his stuff out
of the suitcase: "If you wanna be an artist, you can be an artist any¬
where. A sunset’s a sunset. A landscape’s a landscape. What the
hell difference does it make? And someday you’ll have success. I
know you will. I’ve seen paintings just like yours ... in Sears.
Don’t leave, Jeff! I’ll die!”

Whether or not Jeff goes off to Hollywood, the polarized cast
gives the writer something we all desperately need: scenes.

AUTHORSHIP

When research of setting reaches the saturation point, something
miraculous happens. Your story takes on a unique atmosphere, a
personality that sets it apart from every other story ever told, no
matter how many millions there have been through time. It’s an
amazing phenomenon: Human beings have told one another sto¬
ries since they sat around the fire in caves, and every time the story¬
teller uses the art in its fullest, his story, like a portrait by a master
painter, becomes one of a kind.

Like the stories you’re striving to tell, you want to be one of a
kind, recognized and respected as an original. In your quest, con¬
sider these three words: “author,” “authority," “authenticity.”

First, “author.” “Author” is a title we easily give novelists and
playwrights, rarely screenwriters. But in the strict sense of “origi¬
nator,” the screenwriter, as creator of setting, characters, and story,
is an author . For the test of authorship is knowledge. A true author,
no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his
subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of

l 86 4 ROBERT MCKEE

authority. What a rare pleasure it is to open a screenplay and imme¬
diately surrender to the work, giving over emotion and concentra¬
tion because there is something ineffable between and under the
lines that says: “This writer knows. I’m in the hands of an authority.”
And the effect of writing with authority is authenticity.

Two principles control the emotional involvement of an audi¬
ence. First, empathy: identification with the protagonist that draws
us into the story, vicariously rooting for our own desires in life.
Second, authenticity: We must believe, or as Samuel Taylor Coleridge
suggested, we must willingly suspend our disbelief. Once involved,
the writer must keep us involved to FADE OUT. To do so, he must
convince us that the world of his story is authentic. We know that
storytelling is a ritual surrounding a metaphor for life. To enjoy this
ceremony in the dark we react to stories as if they’re real. We sus¬
pend our cynicism and believe in the tale as long as we find it
authentic. The moment it lacks credibility, empathy dissolves and
we feel nothing.

Authenticity, however, does not mean actuality. Giving a story a
contemporary milieu is no guarantee of authenticity; authenticity
means an internally consistent world, true to itself in scope, depth,
and detail. As Aristotle tells us: “For the purposes of [story] a con¬
vincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.”
We can all list films that had us moaning: “I don’t buy it. People
aren't like that. Makes no sense. That’s not how things happen.”

Authenticity has nothing to do with so-called reality. A story set
in a world that could never exist could be absolutely authentic. Story
arts do not distinguish between reality and the various nonrealities
of fantasy, dream, and ideality. The creative intelligence of the writer
merges all these into a unique yet convincing fictional reality.

ALIEN: In the opening sequence the crew of an interstellar
cargo ship awakes from its stasis chambers and gathers at the mess
table. Dressed in work shirts and dungarees, they drink coffee and
smoke cigarettes. On the table a toy bird bobs in a glass. Elsewhere,
little collectibles of life clutter the living spaces. Plastic bugs hang
from the ceiling, pinups and family photos are taped to the bulk¬
head. The crew talks—not about work or getting home—but about

THE INCITING INCIDENT 4 187

money. Is this unscheduled stop in their contract? Will the com¬
pany pay bonuses for this extra duty?

Have you ever ridden in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler? How
are they decorated? With the little collectibles of life: a plastic saint
on the dashboard, blue ribbons won at a county fair, family photos,
magazine clippings. Teamsters spend more time in their trucks
than at home, so they take pieces of home on the road. And when
they take a break, what’s the first topic of talk? Money—golden
time, overtime, is this in our contract? Understanding this psy¬
chology, screenwriter Dan O’Bannon recreated it in subtle details,
so as that the scene played, the audience surrendered, thinking:
“Wonderful! They’re not spacemen like Buck Rogers or Flash
Gordon. They’re truck drivers/'

In the next sequence, as Kane (John Hurt) investigates an alien
growth, something springs out and smashes through the helmet of
his space suit. Like a huge crab, the creature covers Kane’s face, its
legs locked around his head. What’s worse, it's forced a tube down
his throat and into his belly, putting him in a coma. Science Officer
Ash (Ian Holm) realizes he can't pry the creature loose without rip¬
ping Kane’s face apart, so he decides to release the creature’s grip
by severing its legs one at a time.

But as Ash applies a laser saw to the first leg, the flesh splits
and out spits a viscous substance; a blistering “acid blood” that dis¬
solves steel like sugar and eats a hole through the floor as big as a
watermelon. The crew rushes to the deck below and looks up to see
the acid eating through the ceiling, then burning a hole just as big
through that floor. They rush down another deck and it’s eating
through that ceiling and floor until three decks down the acid
finally peters out. At this point, one thought passed through the
audience: “These people are in deep shit.”

In other words, O’Bannon researched his alien. He asked him¬
self, “What is the biology of my beast? How does it evolve? Feed?
Grow? Reproduce? Does it have any weaknesses? What are its
strengths?” Imagine the list of attributes O'Bannon must have con¬
cocted before seizing on “acid blood.” Imagine the many sources
he may have explored. Perhaps he did an intense study of earth-

l 88 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

bound parasitical insects, or remembered the eighth-century
Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf in which the blood of Grendel the water
monster burns through the hero’s shield, or it came to him in a
nightmare. Whether through investigation, imagination, or
memory, O’Bannon’s alien is a stunning creation.

All the artists making ALIEN—writer, director, designers,
actors—worked to the limit of their talents to create an authentic
world. They knew that believability is the key to terror. Indeed, if the
audience is to feel any emotion, it must believe. For when a film’s
emotional load becomes too sad, too horrifying, even too funny, how
do we try to escape? We say to ourselves: “It’s only a movie.” We
deny its authenticity. But if the film’s of quality, the second we
glance back at the screen, we’re grabbed by the throat and pulled
right back into those emotions. We won’t escape until the film lets
us out, which is what we paid our money for in the first place.

Authenticity depends on the “telling detail.” When we use a few
selected details, the audience’s imagination supplies the rest, com¬
pleting a credible whole. On the other hand, if the writer and
director try too hard to be “real”—especially with sex and violence—
the audience reaction is: “That’s not really real,” or “My God, that’s
so real,” or “They’re not really fucking,” or “My God, they’re really
fucking.” In either case, credibility shatters as the audience is
yanked out of the story to notice the filmmaker’s technique. An
audience believes as long as we don’t give them reason to doubt.

Beyond physical and social detail, we must also create emo¬
tional authenticity. Authorial research must pay off in believable
character behavior. Beyond behavioral credibility, the story itself
must persuade. From event to event, cause and effect must be con¬
vincing, logical. The art of story design lies in the fine adjustment
of things both usual and unusual to things universal and arche¬
typal. The writer whose knowledge of subject has taught him
exactly what to stress and expand versus what to lay down quietly
and subtly will stand out from the thousands of others who always
hit the same note.

Originality lies in the struggle for authenticity, not eccentricity.
A personal style, in other words, cannot be achieved self-consciously.

THE INCITING INCIDENT + 189

Rather, when your authorial knowledge of setting and character
meets your personality, the choices you make and the arrange¬
ments you create out of this mass of material are unique to you.
Your work becomes what you are, an original.

Compare a Waldo Salt story (MIDNIGHT COWBOY, SERPICO)
with an Alvin Sargent story (DOMINICK AND EUGENE, ORDI¬
NARY PEOPLE): one hard-edged, the other tender, one elliptical, the
other linear, one ironic, the other compassionate. The unique story
styles of each is the natural and spontaneous effect of an author mas¬
tering his subject in the never-ending battle against cliches.

THE INCITING INCIDENT

Starting from any Premise at any point in the story’s chronology,
our research feeds the invention of events, the events redirect
research. We do not, in other words, necessarily design a story by
beginning with its first major event. But at some point as you
create your universe, you’ll face these questions: How do I set my
story into action? Where do I place this crucial event?

When an Inciting Incident occurs it must be a dynamic, fully
developed event, not something static or vague. This, for example,
is not an Inciting Incident: A college dropout lives off-campus near
New York University. She wakes one morning and says: “I’m bored
with my life. I think I’ll move to Los Angeles.” She packs her VW
and motors west, but her change of address changes nothing of
value in her life. She's merely exporting her apathy from New York
to California.

If, on the other hand, we notice that she’s created an ingenious
kitchen wallpaper from hundreds of parking tickets, then a sudden
POUNDING on the door brings the police, brandishing a felony
warrant for ten thousand dollars in unpaid citations, and she flees
down the fire escape, heading West—this could be an Inciting
Incident. It has done what an Inciting Incident must do.

The INCITING INCIDENT radically upsets the balance of

forces in the protagonist's life.

190 * ROBERT MCKEE

As a story begins, the protagonist is living a life that’s more or
less in balance. He has successes and failures, ups and downs.
Who doesn’t? But life is in relative control. Then, perhaps suddenly
but in any case decisively, an event occurs that radically upsets its
balance, swinging the value-charge of the protagonist’s reality
either to the negative or to the positive.

Negative: Our dropout reaches L.A., but she balks at taking a
normal job when she’s asked for her social security number.
Fearful that in a computerized world the Manhattan police will
track her down through the Internal Revenue Service, what does
she do? Go underground? Sell drugs? Turn to prostitution?

Positive: Perhaps the knock at the door is an heir hunter with
news of a million-dollar fortune left by an anonymous relative. Sud¬
denly rich, she’s under terrible pressure. With no more excuses for
failure, she has a heart-thumping fear of screwing up this dream
come true.

In most cases, the Inciting Incident is a single event that either
happens directly to the protagonist or is caused by the protagonist.
Consequently, he’s immediately aware that life is out of balance for
better or worse. When lovers first meet, this face-to-face event
turns life, for the moment, to the positive. When Jeffrey abandons
the security of his Davenport family for Hollywood, he knowingly
puts himself at risk.

Occasionally, an Inciting Incident needs two events: a setup
and a payoff. JAWS: Setup, a shark eats a swimmer and her body

THE INCITING INCIDENT + 191

washes onto the beach. Payoff, the sheriff (Roy Scheider) dis¬
covers the corpse. If the logic of an Inciting Incident requires a
setup, the writer cannot delay the payoff—at least not for very
long—and keep the protagonist ignorant of the fact that his life
is out of balance. Imagine JAWS with this design: Shark eats
girl, followed by sheriff goes bowling, gives out parking tickets,
makes love to his wife, goes to PTA meeting, visits his sick
mother . . . while the corpse rots on the beach. A story is not a
sandwich of episodic slices of life between two halves of an
Inciting Incident.

Consider the unfortunate design of THE RIVER: The film
opens with the first half of an Inciting Incident: a businessman,
Joe Wade (Scott Glenn) decides to build a dam across a river,
knowing hell flood five farms in the process. One of these belongs
to Tom and Mae Garvey (Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek). No one,
however, tells Tom or Mae. So for the next hundred minutes we
watch: Tom plays baseball, Tom and Mae struggle to make the
farm turn a profit, Tom goes to work in a factory caught up in a
labor dispute, Mae breaks her arm in a tractor accident, Joe makes
romantic passes at Mae, Mae goes to the factory to visit her hus¬
band who’s now a scab locked in the factory, a stressed-out Tom
fails to get it up, Mae whispers a gentle word, Tom gets it up, and
so on.

Ten minutes from its end, the film delivers the second half
of the Inciting Incident: Tom stumbles into Joe's office, sees a
model of the dam, and says, in effect: “If you build that dam, Joe,
you'll flood my farm.” Joe shrugs. Then, aeus ex machina, it
starts to rain and the river rises. Tom and his buddies get their
bulldozers to shore up the levee; Joe gets his bulldozer and
goons to tear down the levee. Tom and Joe have a bulldozer-to-
r bulldozer Mexican standoff. At this point, Joe steps back and
declares that he didn’t want to build the dam in the first place.
FADE OUT.

The protagonist must react to the Inciting Incident.

192 4 ROBERT MCKEE

Given the infinitely variable nature of protagonists, however,
any reaction is possible. For example, how many Westerns began
like this? Bad guys shoot up the town and kill the old marshal.
Townspeople gather and go down to the livery stable, run by Matt,
a retired gunslinger who's sworn a sacred oath never to kill again.
The mayor pleads: “Matt, you've got to pin on the badge and come
to our aid. You’re the only one that can do it.” Matt replies: “No, no,

I hung up my guns long ago.” “But, Matt,” begs the schoolmarm,
“they killed your mother.” Matt toes the dirt and says: “Well. . . she
was old and I guess her time had come.” He refuses to act, but that
is a reaction.

The protagonist responds to the sudden negative or positive
change in the balance of life in whatever way is appropriate to char¬
acter and world. A refusal to act, however, cannot last for very long,
even in the most passive protagonists of minimalist Nonplots. For
we all wish some reasonable sovereignty over our existence, and if
an event radically upsets our sense of equilibrium and control,
what would we want? What does anyone, including our protago¬
nist, want? To restore balance.

Therefore, the Inciting Incident first throws the protagonist’s life
out of balance, then arouses in him the desire to restore that balance.
Out of this need—often quickly, occasionally with deliberation—the
protagonist next conceives of an Object of Desire: something physical
or situational or attitudinal that he feels he lacks or needs to put the
ship of life on an even keel. Lastly, the Inciting Incident propels the
protagonist into an active pursuit of this object or goal. And for many
stories or genres this is sufficient: An event pitches the protagonist’s
life out of kilter, arousing a conscious desire for something he feels
will set things right, and he goes after it.

But for those protagonists we tend to admire the most, the
Inciting Incident arouses not only a conscious desire, but an
unconscious one as well. These complex characters suffer intense
inner battles because these two desires are in direct conflict with
each other. No matter what the character consciously thinks he
wants, the audience senses or realizes that deep inside he uncon¬
sciously wants the very opposite.

THE INCITING INCIDENT + 193

unconscious desire

CARNAL KNOWLEDGE: If we were to pull the protagonist Jona¬
than (Jack Nicholson) aside and ask him “What do you want?” his
conscious answer would be: “I’m a good-looking guy, lot of fun to be
with, make a terrific living as a CPA. My life would be paradise if I
could find the perfect woman to share it.” The film takes Jonathan
from his college years to middle age, a thirty-year search for his
dream woman. Again and again he meets a beautiful, intelligent
woman, but soon their candlelit romance turns to dark emotions, acts
of physical violence, then breakup. Over and over he plays the great
romantic until he has a woman head over heels in love with him,
then he turns on her, humiliates her, and hurls her out of his life.

At Climax, he invites Sandy (Art Garfunkel), an old college
buddy, for dinner. For amusement he screens 35mm slides of all
the women from his life; a show he entitles “Ballbusters on
Parade.” As each woman appears, he trashes her to Sandy for “what
was wrong with her.” In the Resolution scene, he’s with a prostitute
(Rita Moreno) who has to read him an ode he’s written in praise of
his penis so he can get it up. He thinks he’s hunting for the perfect
woman, but we know that unconsciously he wants to degrade and
destroy women and has done that throughout his life. Jules
Feiffer’s screenplay is a chilling delineation of a man that too many
women know only too well.

MRS. SOFFEL: In 1901 a thief (Mel Gibson) who’s committed
murder awaits execution. The wife of the prison warden (Diane
Keaton) decides to save his soul for God. She reads Bible quotations to
him, hoping that when he’s hanged he’ll go to heaven and not hell.

194 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

They are attracted. She engineers his jailbreak, then joins him. On the
run they make love, but only once. As the authorities close in, she real¬
izes he’s about to die and decides to die with him: “Shoot me," she
begs him, “I don’t want to live a day beyond you." He pulls the trigger
but only wounds her. In the Resolution, she’s imprisoned for life, but
goes into her cell proudly, virtually spitting in the eye of her jailer.

Mrs. Soffel seems to flit from choice to choice, but we sense
that underneath her changes of mind is the powerful unconscious
desire for a transcendent, absolute, romantic experience of such
intensity that if nothing ever happened to her again it wouldn’t
matter . . . because for one sublime moment she will have lived.
Mrs. Soffel is the ultimate romantic.

THE CRYING GAME: Fergus (Stephen Rea), a member of the
Irish Republican Army, is put in charge of a British corporal (Forest
Whitaker) held prisoner by his IRA unit. He finds himself in sym¬
pathy with the man’s plight. When the corporal is killed, Fergus goes
AWOL to England, hiding out from both the British and the IRA. He
looks up the corporal’s lover, Dil (Jaye Davidson). He falls in love, only
to discover that Dil’s a transvestite. The IRA then tracks him down.
Fergus volunteered for the IRA knowing it isn’t a college fraternity, so
when they order him to assassinate an English judge, he must finally
come to terms with his politics. Is he or is he not an Irish patriot?

Beneath Fergus’s conscious political struggle, the audience
senses from his first moments with the prisoner to his last tender
scenes with Dil that this film isn’t about his commitment to the
cause. Hidden behind his zigzag politics Fergus harbors the most
human of needs: to love and be loved.

THE SPINE OF THE STORY

The energy of a protagonist’s desire forms the critical element of
design known as the Spine of the story (AKA Through-line or Super-
objective). The Spine is the deep desire in and effort by the protago¬
nist to restore the balance of life. It's the primary unifying force
that holds all other story elements together. For no matter what
happens on the surface of the story, each scene, image, and word is

THE INCITING INCIDENT + 195

INCITING

©

ultimately an aspect of the Spine, relating, causally or thematically,
to this core of desire and action.

If the protagonist has no unconscious desire, then his con¬
scious objective becomes the Spine. The Spine of any Bond film,
for example, can be phrased as: To defeat the arch-villain. James has
no unconscious desires; he wants and only wants to save the world.
As the story’s unifying force, Bond’s pursuit of his conscious goal
cannot change. If he were to declare, “To hell with Dr. No. I'm
bored with the spy business. I’m going south to work on my back-
swing and lower my handicap,” the film falls apart.

If, on the other hand, the protagonist has an unconscious
desire, this becomes the Spine of the story. An unconscious desire
is always more powerful and durable, with roots reaching to the
protagonist’s innermost self. When an unconscious desire drives
the story, it allows the writer to create a far more complex character
who may repeatedly change his conscious desire.

MOBY DICK: If Melville had made Ahab sole protagonist, his
novel would be a simple but exciting work of High Adventure,
driven by the captain’s monomania to destroy the white whale. But
by adding Ishmael as dual protagonist, Melville enriched his story
into a complex classic of the Education Plot. For the telling is in fact
driven by Ishmael’s unconscious desire to battle inner demons,
seeking in himself the destructive obsessions he sees in Ahab—a
desire that not only contradicts his conscious hope to survive
Ahab’s mad voyage, but may destroy him as it does Ahab.

196 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

INCITING

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UNCONSCIOUS
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OF DESIRE

In THE CRYING GAME Fergus agonizes over politics while
his unconscious need to love and be loved drives the telling. Jona¬
than searches for the “perfect woman” in CARNAL KNOWLEDGE,
flitting from relationship to relationship, while his unconscious
desire to humiliate and destroy women never varies. The leaps of
desire in Mrs. Soffel's mind are enormous—from salvation to
damnation—while unconsciously she seeks to experience the tran¬
scendent romance. The audience senses that the shifting urges of the
complex protagonist are merely reflections of the one thing that
never changes: the unconscious desire.

THE QUEST

From the point of view of the writer looking from the Inciting Inci¬
dent “down the Spine” to the last act's Climax, in spite of all we’ve
said about genres and the various shapes from Archplot to Antiplot,
in truth there’s only one story. In essence we have told one another
the same tale, one way or another, since the dawn of humanity, and
that story could be usefully called the Quest. All stories take the form
of a Quest.

For better or worse, an event throws a character's life
out of balance, arousing in him the conscious and/or
unconscious desire for that which he feels will restore

THE INCITING INCIDENT + 197

THE

QUEST

INCITING

INCIDENT

CONSCIOUS
OBJECTS
OF DESIRE

UNCONSCIOUS
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OF DESIRE

balance, launching him on a Quest for his Object of
Desire against forces of antagonism (inner, personal,
extra-personal). He may or may not achieve it. This is
story in a nutshell.

The essential form of story is simple. But that’s like saying that
the essential form of music is simple. It is. It's twelve notes. But
these twelve notes conspire into everything and anything we have
ever called music. The essential elements of the Quest are the
twelve notes of our music, the melody we’ve listened to all our lives.
However, like the composer sitting down at the piano, when a writer
takes up this seemingly simple form, he discovers how incredibly
complex it is, how inordinately difficult to do.

To understand the Quest form of your story you need only
identify your protagonist’s Object of Desire. Penetrate his psy¬
chology and find an honest answer to the question: “What does he
want?” It may be the desire for something he can take into his
arms: someone to love in MOONSTRUCK. It may be the need for
inner growth: maturity in BIG. But whether a profound change in
the real world —security from a marauding shark in JAWS—or a
profound change in the spiritual realm —a meaningful life in
TENDER MERCIES—by looking into the heart of the protagonist
and discovering his desire, you begin to see the arc of your story,
the Quest on which the Inciting Incident sends him.

198 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

DESIGN OF THE INCITING INCIDENT

An Inciting Incident happens in only one of two ways: randomly or
causally, either by coincidence or by decision. If by decision, it can
be made by the protagonist—Ben’s decision to drink himself to
death in LEAVING LAS VEGAS, or, as in KRAMER vs. KRAMER,
by someone with the power to upset the protagonist’s life—Mrs.
Kramer's decision to leave Mr. Kramer and their child. If by coinci¬
dence, it may be tragic—the accident that kills Alice’s husband in
ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE, or serendipitous—a
sports promoter meets beautiful and gifted athlete in PAT AND
MIKE. By choice or accident; there are no other means.

The Inciting Incident of the Central Plot must happen
onscreen—not in the Backstory, not between scenes offscreen.
Each subplot has its own Inciting Incident, which may or may not
be onscreen, but the presence of the audience at the Central Plot’s
Inciting Incident is crucial to story design for two reasons.

First, when the audience experiences an Inciting Incident, the
film’s Major Dramatic Question, a variation on “How will this turn
out?” is provoked to mind. JAWS: Will the sherifFkill the shark, or the
shark the sheriff? LA NOTTE: After Lidia (Jeanne Moreau) tells her
husband (Marcello Mastroianni) that he disgusts her and she's leaving,
will she go or stay? JALSAGHER (THE MUSIC ROOM): Biswas
(Huzur Roy), an aristocrat with a life-consuming love of music,
decides to sell his wife’s jewels, then his palace to finance his passion
for beauty. Will extravagance destroy or redeem this connoisseur?

In Hollywood jargon, the Central Plot's Inciting Incident is the
“big hook.” It must occur onscreen because this is the event that
incites and captures the audience’s curiosity. Hunger for the
answer to the Major Dramatic Question grips the audience’s
interest, holding it to the last act’s climax.

Second, witnessing the Inciting Incident projects an image of
the Obligatory Scene into the audience’s imagination. The Obliga¬
tory Scene (AKA Crisis) is an event the audience knows it must see
before the story can end. This scene will bring the protagonist into
a confrontation with the most powerful forces of antagonism in his

THE INCITING INCIDENT + 199

quest, forces stirred to life by the Inciting Incident that will gather
focus and strength through the course of the story. The scene is
called “obligatory” because having teased the audience into antici¬
pating this moment, the writer is obligated to keep his promise and
show it to them.

JAWS: When the shark attacks a vacationer and the sheriff dis¬
covers her remains, an vivid image comes to mind: The shark and the
sheriff do battle face-to-face. We don’t know how we’ll get there, or
how it’ll turn out. But we do know the film can’t be over until the
shark has the sheriff virtually in its jaws. Screenwriter Peter Benchley
could not have played this critical event from the point of view of
townspeople peering out to sea with binoculars, wondering: “Is that
the sheriff? Is that the shark?” BOOM! Then have sheriff and marine
biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) swim ashore, shouting, “Oh, what a fight.
Let us tell you about it.” Having projected the image in our mind,
Benchley was obligated to put us with the sheriff when it happens.

Unlike action genres that bring the Obligatory Scene immedi¬
ately and vividly to mind, other more interior genres hint at this
scene in the Inciting Incident, then like a photo negative in acid
solution, slowly bring it into focus. In TENDER MERCIES Mac
Sledge is drowning in booze and an utterly meaningless life. His
ascent from rock bottom begins when he meets a lonely woman
with a son who needs a father. He’s inspired to write some new
songs, then accepts baptism and tries to make peace with his
estranged daughter. Gradually he pieces together a meaningful life.

The audience, however, senses that because the dragon of
meaninglessness drove Sledge to rock bottom, it must once again
rear its gruesome head, that the story can’t end until he is slapped
in the face with the cruel absurdity of life—this time in all its soul-
destroying force. The Obligatory Scene comes in the form of a
hideous accident that kills his only child. If a drunk needed an
excuse to pick up a bottle again, this would do. Indeed, his
daughter’s death plunges his ex-wife into a drugged stupor, but
Sledge finds strength to go on.

The death of Sledge's daughter was “obligatory” in this sense:
Suppose Horton Foote had written this scenario: The friendless

200 + ROBERT MCKEE

alcoholic Sledge wakes up one morning with nothing to live for. He
meets a woman, falls in love, likes her kid and wants to raise him,
finds religion, and writes a new tune. FADE OUT. This isn't story;
it’s daydream. If the quest for meaning has brought about a pro¬
found inner change in Sledge, how is Foote to express this? Not
through declarations of a change of heart. Self-explanatory dialogue
convinces no one. It must be tested by an ultimate event, by pres¬
sure-filled character choice and action—the Obligatory (Crisis)
Scene and Climax of the last act.

When I say that the audience “knows” an Obligatory Scene
awaits, it doesn’t know in an objective, checklist sense. If this event is
mishandled, the audience won’t exit thinking, “Lousy flick. No Oblig¬
atory Scene.” Rather, the audience knows intuitively when something
is missing. A lifetime of story ritual has taught the audience to antici¬
pate that the forces of antagonism provoked at the Inciting Incident
will build to the limit of human experience, and that the telling
cannot end until the protagonist is in some sense face to face with
these forces at their most powerful. Linking a story’s Inciting Inci¬
dent to its Crisis is an aspect of Foreshadowing, the arrangement of
early events to prepare for later events. In fact, every choice you
make—genre, setting, character, mood—foreshadows. With each
line of dialogue or image of action you guide the audience to antici¬
pate certain possibilities, so that when events arrive, they somehow
satisfy the expectations you’ve created. The primary component of
foreshadowing, however, is the projection of the Obligatory Scene
(Crisis) into the audience’s imaginaton by the Inciting Incident.

LOCATING THE INCITING INCIDENT

Where to place the Inciting Incident in the overall story design? As
a rule of thumb, the first major event of the Central Plot occurs
within the first 25 percent of the telling. This is a useful guide, no
matter what the medium. How long would you make a theatre
audience sit in the dark before engaging the story in a play? Would
you make a reader plow through the first hundred pages of a four-
hundred-page novel before finding the Central Plot? How long

THE INCITING INCIDENT + 201

before irredeemable boredom sets in? The standard for a two-hour
feature film is to locate the Central Plot’s Inciting Incident some¬
where within the first half-hour.

It could be the very first thing that happens. In the first thirty
seconds of SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS Sullivan (Joel McCrea), a
director of vapid but profitable films, defies studio bosses and sets
out to make a film with social significance. Within the first two
minutes of ON THE WATERFRONT Terry (Marlon Brando) unwit¬
tingly helps gangsters murder a friend.

Or much later. Twenty-seven minutes into TAXI DRIVER a
teenage prostitute, Iris (Jodie Foster), jumps into Travis Bickle’s
(Robert De Niro) taxi. Her abusive pimp, Matthew (Harvey Keitel)
yanks her back to the street, igniting Travis’s desire to rescue her. A
half-hour into ROCKY an obscure club fighter, Rocky Balboa (Syl¬
vester Stallone), agrees to fight Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) for the
heavyweight championship of the world. When Sam plays “As Time
Goes By” thirty-two minutes into CASABLANCA, lisa suddenly reap¬
pears in Rick’s life, launching one of the screen’s great love stories.

Or anywhere in between. However, if the Central Plot’s Inciting
Incident arrives much later than fifteen minutes into the film,
boredom becomes a risk. Therefore, while the audience waits for the
main plot, a subplot may be needed to engage their interest.

In TAXI DRIVER, the subplot of Travis’s lunatic attempt at polit¬
ical assassination grips us. In ROCKY we’re held by the ghetto love
story of the painfully shy Adrian (Talia Shire) and the equally trou¬
bled Rocky. In CHINATOWN Gittes is duped into investigating
Hollis Mulwray for adultery, and this subplot fascinates us as he
struggles to untangle himself from the ruse. CASABLANCA’s Act
One hooks us with the Inciting Incidents of no fewer than five well¬
paced subplots.

But why make an audience sit through a subplot, waiting half
an hour for the main plot to begin? ROCKY, for example, is in the
Sports Genre. Why not start with two quick scenes: The heavyweight
champion gives an obscure club fighter a shot at the title (setup),
followed by Rocky choosing to take the fight (payoff). Why not open
the film with its Central Plot?

202 4 ROBERT MCKEE

Because if ROCKY’s Inciting Incident were the first event we
saw, our reaction would have been a shrug and “So what?” There¬
fore, Stallone uses the first half-hour to delineate Rocky’s world
and character with craft and economy, so that when Rocky agrees
to the fight, the audience’s reaction is strong and complete: “Him?
That loser?!” They sit in shock, dreading the blood-soaked, bone¬
crushing defeat that lies ahead.

Bring in the Central Plot's Inciting Incident as soon as

possible . . . but not until the moment is ripe.

An Inciting Incident must “hook” the audience, a deep and
complete response. Their response must not only be emotional,
but rational. This event must not only pull at audience’s feelings,
but cause them to ask the Major Dramatic Question and imagine
the Obligatory Scene. Therefore, the location of the Central Plot’s
Inciting Incident is found in the answer to this question: How
much does the audience need to know about the protagonist and
his world to have a full response?

In some stories, nothing. If an Inciting Incident is archetypal
in nature, it requires no setup and must occur immediately. The
first sentence of Kafka’s Metamorphosis reads: “One day Gregor
Samsa awoke to discover he had been changed into a large cock¬
roach.” KRAMER VS. KRAMER: A wife walks out on her husband
and leaves her child with him in the film’s first two minutes. It
needs no preparation, for we immediately understand the terrible
impact that would have on anybody’s life. JAWS: Shark eats
swimmer, sheriff discovers body. These two scenes strike within
the first seconds as we instantly grasp the horror.

Suppose Peter Benchley had opened JAWS with scenes of the
sheriff quitting his job with the New York City police and moving
out to Amity Island, looking forward to a peaceful life as a law
officer in this resort town. We meet his family. We meet the town
council and mayor. Early summer brings the tourists. Happy
times. Then a shark eats somebody. And suppose Spielberg had
been foolish enough to shoot all of this exposition, would we have

THE INCITING INCIDENT + 203

seen it? No. Editor Verna Fields would have dumped it on the cut¬
ting room floor, explaining that all the audience needs to know
about the sheriff, his family, the mayor, city council, and tourists
will be nicely dramatized in the town’s reaction to the attack . . . but
JAWS starts with the shark.

As soon as possible, but not until the moment is ripe . . . Every
story world and cast are different, therefore, every Inciting Incident
is a different event located at a different point. If it arrives too soon,
the audience may be confused. If it arrives too late, the audience
may be bored. The instant the audience has a sufficient under¬
standing of character and world to react fully, execute your Inciting
Incident. Not a scene earlier, or a scene later. The exact moment is
found as much by feeling as by analysis.

If we writers have a common fault in design and placement of
the Inciting Incident, it’s that we habitually delay the Central Plot
while we pack our opening sequences with exposition. We consis¬
tently underestimate knowledge and life experience of the audi¬
ence, laying out our characters and world with tedious details the
filmgoer has already filled in with common sense.

Ingmar Bergman is one of the cinema’s best directors because he
is, in my opinion, the cinema’s finest screenwriter. And the one
quality that stands above all the others in Bergman’s writing is his
extreme economy—how little he tells us about anything. In his
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, for example, all we ever learn about
his four characters is that the father is a widowed, best-selling novelist,
his son-in-law a doctor, his son a student, and his daughter a schizo¬
phrenic, suffering from the same illness that killed her mother. She's
been released from a mental hospital to join her family for a few days
by the sea, and that act alone upsets the balance of forces in all their
lives, propelling a powerful drama from the first moments.

No book-signing scenes to help us understand that the father is
a commercial but not critical success. No scenes in an operating
room to demonstrate the doctor’s profession. No boarding school
scenes to explain how much the son needs his father. No electric
shock treatment sessions to explain the daughter’s anguish.
Bergman knows that his urbane audience quickly grasps the impli-

204 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

cations behind best-seller, doctor, boarding school, and mental hos¬
pital . . . and that less is always more.

THE QUALITY OF THE INCITING INCIDENT

A favorite joke among film distributors goes like this: A typical Euro¬
pean film opens with golden, sunlit clouds. Cut to even more splendid,
bouffant clouds. Cut again to yet more magnificent, rubescent clouds.
A Hollywood film opens with golden, billowing clouds. In the second
shot a 747 jumbo jet comes out of the clouds. In the third, it explodes.

What quality of event need an Inciting Incident be?

ORDINARY PEOPLE carries a Central Plot and subplot that are
often mistaken for each other because of their unconventional
design. Conrad (Timothy Hutton) is the protagonist of the film's
subplot with an Inciting Incident that takes the life of his older
brother during a storm at sea. Conrad survives but is guilt-ridden
and suicidal. The brother’s death is in the Backstory and is drama¬
tized in flashback at the Crisis/Climax of the subplot when Conrad
relives the boating accident and chooses to live.

The Central Plot is driven by Conrad’s father, Calvin (Donald
Sutherland). Although seemingly passive, he is by definition the
protagonist: the empathetic character with the will and capacity to
pursue desire to the end of the line. Throughout the film, Calvin is
on a quest for the cruel secret that haunts his family and makes
reconciliation between his son and wife impossible. After a painful
struggle, he finds it: His wife hates Conrad, not since the death of
her older son, but since Conrad’s birth.

At the Crisis Calvin confronts his wife, Beth (Mary Tyler
Moore) with the truth: She’s an obsessively orderly woman who
wanted only one child. When her second son came along, she
resented his craving for love when she could love only her first¬
born. She’s always hated Conrad, and he’s always felt it. This is
why he’s been suicidal over his brother’s death. Calvin then forces
the Climax: She must learn to love Conrad or leave. Beth goes to a
closet, packs a suitcase, and heads out the door. She cannot face
her inability to love her son.

THE INCITING INCIDENT 4 205

This Climax answers the Major Dramatic Question: Will the
family solve its problems within itself or be torn apart? Working
backward from it, we seek the Inciting Incident, the event that has
upset the balance of Calvin’s life and sent him on his quest.

The film opens with Conrad coming home from a psychiatric
hospital, presumably cured of his suicidal neurosis. Calvin feels
that the family has survived its loss and balance has been restored.
The next morning Conrad, in a grim mood, sits opposite his father
at the breakfast table. Beth puts a plate of French toast under her
son’s face. He refuses to eat. She snatches the plate away, marches
to the sink, and scrapes his breakfast down a garbage disposal,
muttering: “You can’t keep French toast.”

Director Robert Redford’s camera cuts to the father as the
man’s life crashes. Calvin instantly senses that the hatred is back
with a vengeance. Behind it hides something fearful. This chilling
event grips the audience with dread as it reacts, thinking: “Look
what she did to her child! He’s just home from the hospital and
she's doing this number on him.”

Novelist Judith Guest and screenwriter Alvin Sargent gave
Calvin a quiet characterization, a man who won’t leap up from the
table and try to bully wife and son into reconciliation. His first
thought is to give them time and loving encouragements, such as
the family photo scene. When he learns of Conrad's troubles at
school, he hires a psychiatrist for him. He talks gently with his
wife, hoping to understand.

Because Calvin is a hesitant, compassionate man, Sargent
had to build the dynamic of the film's progressions around the
subplot. Conrad’s struggle with suicide is far more active than
Calvin’s subtle quest. So Sargent foregrounded the boy’s subplot,
giving it inordinate emphasis and screentime, while carefully
increasing the momentum of the Central Plot in the background.
By the time the subplot ends in the psychiatrist’s office, Calvin is
ready to bring the Central Plot to its devastating end. The point,
however, is that the Inciting Incident of ORDINARY PEOPLE is
triggered by a woman scraping French toast down a garbage
disposal.

206 4 ROBERT MCKEE

Henry James wrote brilliantly about story art in the prefaces to
his novels, and once asked: “What, after all, is an event?” An event,
he said, could be as little as a woman putting her hand on the table
and looking at you “that certain way.” In the right context, just a
gesture and a look could mean, “I'll never see you again,” or “I'll
love you forever"—a life broken or made.

The quality of the Inciting Incident (for that matter, any event)
must be germane to the world, characters, and genre surrounding it.
Once it is conceived, the writer must concentrate on its function.
Does the Inciting Incident radically upset the balance of forces in the
protagonist's life? Does it arouse in the protagonist the desire to
restore balance? Does it inspire in him the conscious desire for that
object, material or immaterial, he feels would restore the balance? In
a complex protagonist, does it also bring to life an unconscious desire
that contradicts his conscious need? Does it launch the protagonist
on a quest for his desire? Does it raise the Major Dramatic Question
in the mind of the audience? Does it project an image of the Obliga¬
tory Scene? If it does all this, then it can be as little as a woman
putting her hand on the table, looking at you “that certain way.”

CREATING THE INCITING INCIDENT

The Climax of the last act is far and away the most difficult scene to
create: It’s the soul of the telling. If it doesn’t work, the story doesn’t
work. But the second most difficult scene to write is the Central
Plot’s Inciting Incident. We rewrite this scene more than any other.
So here are some questions to ask that should help bring it to mind.

What is the worst possible thing that could happen to my pro¬
tagonist? How could that turn out to be the best possible thing that
could happen to him?

KRAMER VS. KRAMER. The worst: Disaster strikes the worka¬
holic Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) when his wife walks out on him
and her child. The best: This turns out to be the shock he needed to
fulfill his unconscious desire to be a loving human being.

AN UNMARRIED WOMAN. The worst: When her husband
says he’s leaving her for another woman, Erica (Jill Clayburgh)

THE INCITING INCIDENT « 207

retches. The best: His exit turns out to be the freeing experience
that allows this male-dependent woman to fulfill her unconscious
desire for independence and self-possession.

Or: What's the best possible thing that could happen to my pro¬
tagonist? How could it become the worst possible thing?

DEATH IN VENICE. Von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde) has lost
his wife and children to a plague. Since then he’s buried himself in
his work to the point of physical and mental collapse. His doctor
sends him to the Venice spa to recuperate. The best: There he falls
madly, helplessly in love . . . but with a boy. His passion for the
impossibly beautiful youth, and the impossibility of it, leads to
despair. The worst: When a new plague invades Venice and the
child’s mother hurries her son away, Von Aschenbach lingers to
wait for death and escape from his misery.

THE GODFATHER, PART II. The best: After Michael (Al
Pacino) is made Don of the Corleone crime family, he decides to
take his family into the legitimate world. The worst: His ruthless
enforcement of the mafia code of loyalty ends in the assassination
of his closest associates, estrangement from his wife and children,
and the murder of his brother, leaving him a hollowed-out, desolate
man.

A story may turn more than one cycle of this pattern. What is
the best? How could that become the worst? How could that
reverse yet again into the protagonist’s salvation? Or: What is the
worst? How could that become the best? How could that lead the
protagonist to damnation? We stretch toward the “bests” and
“worsts” because story—when it is art—is not about the middle
ground of human experience.

The impact of the Inciting Incident creates our opportunity to
reach the limits of life. It’s a kind of explosion. In Action genres it
may be in fact an explosion; in other films, as muted as a smile. No
matter how subtle or direct, it must upset the status quo of the pro¬
tagonist and jolt his life from its existing pattern, so that chaos
invades the character's universe. Out of this upheaval, you must
find, at Climax, a resolution, for better or worse, that rearranges
this universe into a new order.

9

ACT DESIGN

PROGRESSIVE COMPLICATIONS

The second element of the five-part design is Progressive Complications:
that great sweeping body of story that spans from Inciting Incident to
Crisis/Climax of the final act. To complicate means to make life diffi¬
cult for characters. To complicate progressively means to generate
more and more conflict as they face greater and greater forces of antag¬
onism, creating a succession of events that passes points of no return.

Points of No Return

The Inciting Incident launches the protagonist on a quest for a
conscious or unconscious Object of Desire to restore life's balance.
To begin the pursuit of his desire, he takes a minimum, conserva¬
tive action to provoke a positive response from his reality. But the
effect of his action is to arouse forces of antagonism from inner,
personal, or social/environmental Levels of Conflict that block his
desire, cracking open the Gap between expectation and result.

When the Gap opens, the audience realizes that this is a point
of no return. Minimal efforts won't work. The character can’t
restore the balance of life by taking lesser actions. Henceforth, all
action like the character’s first effort, actions of minor quality and
magnitude, must be eliminated from the story.

Realizing he’s at risk, the protagonist draws upon greater
willpower and capacity to struggle through this gap and take a

208

ACT DESIGN 4 209

second, more difficult action. But again the effect is to provoke forces
of antagonism, opening a second gap between expectation and result.

The audience now senses that this too is a point of no return.
Moderate actions like the second won’t succeed. Therefore, all
actions of this magnitude and quality must be eliminated.

At greater risk, the character must adjust to his changed circum¬
stances and take an action that demands even more willpower and
personal capacity, expecting or at least hoping for a helpful or man¬
ageable reaction from his world. But once more the gap flies open as
even more powerful forces of antagonism react to his third action.

Again, the audience recognizes that this is yet another point of
no return. The more extreme actions won’t get the character what
he wants, so these too are canceled out of consideration.

Progressions build by drawing upon greater and greater capaci¬
ties from characters, demanding greater and greater willpower from
them, putting them at greater and greater risk, constantly passing
points of no return in terms of the magnitude or quality of action.

A story must not retreat to actions of lesser quality or
magnitude, but move progressively forward to a final
action beyond which the audience cannot imagine
another.

How many times have you had this experience? A film begins
well, hooking you into the lives of the characters. It builds with
strong interest over the first half-hour to a major Turning Point.
But then forty or fifty minutes into the film, it starts to drag. Your
eyes wander from the screen; you glance at your watch; you wish
you’d bought more popcorn; you start paying attention to the
anatomy of the person you came with. Perhaps the film gains pace
again and finishes well, but for twenty or thirty flabby minutes in
the middle you lost interest.

If you look closely at the soft bellies that hang out over the belt of
so many films, you’ll discover that this is where the writer’s insight
and imagination went limp. He couldn’t build progressions, so in
effect he put the story in retrograde. In the middle of Act Two he’s

210 4 ROBERT MCKEE

given his characters lesser actions of the kind they've already done in
Act One—not identical actions but actions of a similar size or kind:
minimal, conservative, and by now trivial. As we watch, our instincts
tell us that these actions didn’t get the character what he wanted in
Act One, therefore they're not going to get him what he wants in Act
Two. The writer is recycling story and we’re treading water.

The only way to keep a film’s current flowing and rising is
research—imagination, memory, fact. Generally, a feature-length
Archplot is designed around forty to sixty scenes that conspire into
twelve to eighteen sequences that build into three or more acts that
top one another continuously to the end of the line. To create forty
to sixty scenes and not repeat yourself, you need to invent hundreds.
After sketching this mountain of material, tunnel to find those few
gems that will build sequences and acts into memorable and
moving points of no return. For if you devise only the forty to sixty
scenes needed to fill the 120 pages of a screenplay, your work is
almost certain to be antiprogressive and repetitious.

The Law of Conflict

When the protagonist steps out of the Inciting Incident, he enters a
world governed by the Law of Conflict. To wit: Nothing moves for¬
ward in a story except through conflict.

Put another way, conflict is to storytelling what sound is to
music. Both story and music are temporal arts, and the single most
difficult task of the temporal artist is to hook our interest, hold our
uninterrupted concentration, then carry us through time without an
awareness of the passage of time.

In music, this effect is accomplished through sound. Instru¬
ments or voices capture us and move us along, making time vanish.
Suppose we were listening to a symphony and the orchestra sud¬
denly fell silent. What would be the effect? First, confusion as we
wonder why they’ve stopped, then very quickly we would hear in our
imaginations the sound of a ticking clock. We would become acutely
aware of the passage of time, and because time is so subjective, if the
orchestra were silent for just three minutes, it would seem like thirty.

ACT DESIGN « 211

The music of story is conflict. As long as conflict engages our
thoughts and emotions we travel through the hours unaware of the
voyage. Then suddenly the film’s over. We glance at our watches,
amazed. But when conflict disappears, so do we. The pictorial
interest of eye-pleasing photography or the aural pleasures of a
beautiful score may hold us briefly, but if conflict is kept on hold
for too long, our eyes leave the screen. And when our eyes leave the
screen they take thought and emotion with them.

The Law of Conflict is more than an aesthetic principle; it is the
soul of story. Story is metaphor for life, and to be alive is to be in
seemingly perpetual conflict. As Jean-Paul Sartre expressed it, the
essence of reality is scarcity, a universal and eternal lacking. There
isn’t enough of anything in this world to go around. Not enough
food, not enough love, not enough justice, and never enough time.
Time, as Heidegger observed, is the basic category of existence. We
live in its ever-shrinking shadow, and if we are to achieve anything
in our brief being that lets us die without feeling we’ve wasted our
time, we will have to go into heady conflict with the forces of
scarcity that deny our desires.

Writers who cannot grasp the truth of our transitory existence,
who have been mislead by the counterfeit comforts of the modem
world, who believe that life is easy once you know how to play the
game, give conflict a false inflection. Their scripts fail for one of
two reasons: either a glut of meaningless and absurdly violent con¬
flict, or a vacancy of meaningful and honestly expressed conflict.

The former are exercises in turbo special effects, written by
those who follow textbook imperatives to create conflict, but,
because they’re disinterested in or insensitive to the honest strug¬
gles of life, devise phony, overwrought excuses for mayhem.

The latter are tedious portraits written in reaction against con¬
flict itself. These writers take the Pollyanna view that life would
really be nice ... if it weren’t for conflict. Therefore, their films
avoid it in favor of low-key depictions to suggest that if we learned to
communicate a little better, be a little more charitable, respect the
environment, humanity could return to paradise. But if history has
taught us anything, it’s that when toxic nightmare is finally cleaned

212 « ROBERT MCKEE

up, the homeless provided shelter, and the world converted to solar
energy, each of us will still be up to our eyebrows in mulch.

Writers at these extremes fail to realize that while the quality of
conflict changes as it shifts from level to level, the quantity of conflict
in life is constant. Something is always lacking. Like squeezing a bal¬
loon, the volume of conflict never changes, it just bulges in another
direction. When we remove conflict from one level of life, it ampli¬
fies ten times over on another level.

If, for example, we manage to satisfy our external desires and find
harmony with the world, in short order serenity turns to boredom.
Now Sartre’s “scarcity” is the absence of conflict itself. Boredom is
the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a
lacking. What’s worse, if we were to put on screen the conflictless
existence of a character who, day-in, day-out, lives in placid content¬
ment, the boredom in the audience would be palpably painful.

By and large, the struggle for physical survival has been elimi¬
nated for the educated classes of the industrialized nations. This
security from the outside world gives us time to reflect on the
world inside. Once housed, dressed, fed, and medicated, we take a
breath and realize how incomplete we are as human beings. We
want more than physical comfort, we want, of all things, happiness,
and so begin the wars of the inner life.

If, as a writer, however, you find that the conflicts of mind,
body, emotions, and soul do not interest you, then look into the
Third World and see how the rest of humanity lives. The majority
suffer short, painful existences, ridden with disease and hunger,
terrorized by tyranny and lawless violence, without hope that life
will ever be any different for their children.

If the depth and breadth of conflict in the inner life and the
greater world do not move you, let this: death. Death is like a
freight train in the future, heading toward us, closing the hours,
second by second, between now and then. If we’re to live with any
sense of satisfaction, we must engage life’s forces of antagonism
before the train arrives.

An artist intent on creating works of lasting quality comes to
realize that life isn’t about subtle adjustments to stress, or hyper-

ACT DESIGN + 213

conflicts of master criminals with stolen nuclear devices holding
cities for ransom. Life is about the ultimate questions of finding
love and self-worth, of bringing serenity to inner chaos, of the
titanic social inequities everywhere around us, of time running out.
Life is conflict. That is its nature. The writer must decide where
and how to orchestrate this struggle.

Complication Versus Complexity

To complicate a story the writer builds conflict progressively to
the end of the line. Difficult enough. But the task increases geo¬
metrically when we take story from mere complication to full
complexity.

Conflict may come, as we've seen, from any one, two, or all
three of the levels of antagonism. To simply complicate a story
means to place all conflict on only one of these three levels.

From the Horror Film to Action/Adventure to Farce , action
heroes face conflict only on the extra-personal level. James Bond,
for example, has no inner conflicts, nor would we mistake his
encounters with women as personal—they’re recreational.

COMPLICATION:

CONFLICT AT ONLY ONE LEVEL

INNER CONFLICT — Stream of Consciousness

PERSONAL CONFLICT - Soap Opera

EXTRA-PERSONAL CONFLICT - Action/Adventure, Farce

Complicated films share two hallmarks. The first is a large cast.
If the writer restricts the protagonist to social conflict, he'll need, as
the advertising declares, “a cast of thousands.” James Bond faces
arch-villains along with their minions, assassins, femmes fatale,
and armies, plus helper characters and civilians needing rescue—

214 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

more and more characters to build more and more powerful con¬
flicts between Bond and society.

Second, a complicated film needs multiple sets and locations.
If the writer progresses via physical conflict, he must keep
changing the environment. A Bond film might start in a Viennese
opera house, then go to the Himalayas, across the Sahara Desert,
under the polar ice cap, up to the moon, and down to Broadway,
giving Bond more and more opportunities for fascinating feats of
derring-do.

Stories that are complicated only on the level of personal con¬
flict are known as Soap Opera, an open-ended combination of
Domestic Drama and Love Story in which every character in the
story has an intimate relationship with every other character in the
story—a multitude of family, friends, and lovers, all needing sets
to house them: living rooms, bedrooms, offices, nightclubs, hospi¬
tals. Soap Opera characters have no inner or extra-personal con¬
flicts. They suffer when they don’t get what they want, but because
they’re either good people or bad, they rarely face true inner
dilemmas. Society never intervenes in their air-conditioned worlds.
If, for example, a murder should bring a detective, a representative
of society, into the story, you can be certain that within a week this
cop will have an intimate and personal relationship with every
other character in the Soap.

Stories that are complicated only on the level of inner con¬
flict are not films, plays, or conventional novels. They’re prose
works in the Stream of Consciousness genre, a verbalization of the
inscape of thought and feeling. Again, a large cast. Even though
we’re placed inside a single character, that character’s mind is
populated with the memories and imaginings of everyone he has
ever met or could hope to meet. What’s more, the density of
imagery in the Stream of Consciousness work, such as NAKED
LUNCH, is so intense that locations change, as it were, three or
four times in a single sentence. A barrage of places and faces
pours through the reader’s imagination, but these works are
all on one, albeit richly subjective, level and, therefore, merely
complicated.

ACT DESIGN 4 215

COMPLEXITY:

CONFLICT AT ALL THREE LEVELS

To achieve complexity the writer brings his characters into con¬
flict on all three levels of life, often simultaneously. For example,
the deceptively simple but complex writing of one of the most
memorable events in any film for the last two decades: the French
toast scene from KRAMER VS. KRAMER. This famous scene turns
on a complex of three values: self-confidence, a child's trust and
esteem for his father, and domestic survival. As the scene begins,
all three are at the positive charge.

In the film's first moments Kramer discovers his wife has left
him and his son. He’s torn with an inner conflict that takes the
form of doubts and fears that he’s in over his head versus a male
arrogance telling him whatever women do is easy. As he opens the
scene, however, he’s confident.

Kramer has personal conflict. His son is hysterical, afraid he’ll
starve without his mother to feed him. Kramer tries to calm his
son, telling him not to worry, Mom will be back, but meantime it’ll
be fun, like camping out. The child dries his eyes, trusting his
father’s promises.

Finally, Kramer has extra-personal conflict. The kitchen is an
alien world, but he strolls into it as if he were a French chef.

Perching his son on a stool, Kramer asks what he wants for break¬
fast and the kid says, “French toast.” Kramer takes a breath, pulls out a
frying pan, pours in some grease, puts the pan on the stove, and turns
the flame to high while he looks for ingredients. He knows French
toast involves eggs, so he searches the refrigerator and finds some, but
doesn’t know into what to break them. He rummages in the cupboard
and comes down with a coffee mug that reads “Teddy.”

The son sees the handwriting on the wall and warns Kramer that
he’s seen his mother do this and she doesn't use a mug. Kramer tells

A INNER CONFLICT
PERSONAL CONFLICT
j EXTRA-PERSONAL CONFLICT

2l6 4 ROBERT MCKEE

him it’ll work. He cracks the eggs. Some actually gets into the mug,
the rest makes a gooey mess . . . and the child starts to cry.

The grease starts to spatter in the frying pan and Kramer
panics. It doesn’t occur to him to turn off the gas; instead, he
engages in a race against time. He bangs more eggs into the mug,
rushes back to the refrigerator, grabs a quart of milk, and slops it
up and over the brim of the mug. He finds a butter knife to break
up the yolks, making an even gooier mess. The child can see he is
not going to eat this morning and cries his eyes out. The grease is
now smoking in the pan.

Kramer, desperate, angry, losing the fight to control his fears,
grabs a slice of Wonder Bread, stares at it, and realizes it won't fit
in the mug. He folds it in half and stuffs it in, coming up with a
dripping handful of soggy bread, yolk, and milk that he flings at the
griddle, spattering and burning him and the child. He snatches the
pan from the stove, scalding his hand, clutches his son’s arm, and
pushes him through the door, saying, "We’ll go to a restaurant.”

Kramer’s male arrogance is overwhelmed by his fears, his self-
confidence turning positive to negative. He’s humiliated in front of
his frightened child, whose trust and esteem turn positive to nega¬
tive. He’s defeated by a seemingly animated kitchen, as blow by
blow, eggs, grease, bread, milk, and pan send him stumbling out
the door, turning domestic survival from positive to negative. With
very little dialogue and the simple activity of a man trying to make
breakfast for his son, the scene becomes one of the most memo¬
rable in film—a three-minute drama of a man in simultaneous
conflict with the complexities of life.

Unless it’s your ambition to write in the Action genres, Soap
Opera , or Stream of Consciousness prose, my advice to most writers is
to design relatively simple but complex stories. “Relatively simple”
doesn't mean simplistic. It means beautifully turned and told stories
restrained by these two principles: Do not proliferate characters; do
not multiply locations. Rather than hopscotching through time,
space, and people, discipline yourself to a reasonably contained cast
and world, while you concentrate on creating a rich complexity.

ACT DESIGN 4 217

Act Design

As a symphony unfolds in three, four, or more movements, so story
is told in movements called acts —the macro-structure of story.

Beats, changing patterns of human behavior, build scenes. Ide¬
ally, every scene becomes a Turning Point in which the values at
stake swing from the positive to the negative or the negative to the
positive, creating significant but minor change in their lives. A series
of scenes build a sequence that culminates in a scene that has a mod¬
erate impact on the characters, turning or changing values for better
or worse to a greater degree than any scene. A series of sequences
builds an act that climaxes in a scene that creates a major reversal in
the characters’ lives, greater than any sequence accomplished.

In the Poetics, Aristotle deduces that there is a relationship
between the size of the story—how long it takes to read or per¬
form—and the number of major Turning Points necessary to tell
it: the longer the work, the more major reversals. In other words, in
his polite way, Aristotle is pleading, “Please don’t bore us. Don’t
make us sit for hours on those hard marble seats listening to choral
chants and laments while nothing actually happens.”

Following Aristotle’s principle: A story can be told in one act—
a series of scenes that shape a few sequences that build up to one
major reversal, ending the story. But if so, it must be brief. This is
the prose short story, the one-act play, or the student or experi¬
mental film of perhaps five to twenty minutes.

A story can be told in two acts: two major reversals and it’s
over. But again it must be relatively brief: the sitcom, the novella,
or hour-length plays such as Anthony Shaffer’s Black Comedy and
August Strindberg’s Miss Julie.

But when a story reaches a certain magnitude—the feature
film, an hour-long TV episode, the full-length play, the novel—
three acts is the minimum. Not because of an artificial convention,
but to serve a profound purpose.

As audience we embrace the story artist and say: “I'd like a poetic
experience in breadth and depth to the limits of life. But I’m a reason¬
able person. If I give you only a few minutes to read or witness your

218 + ROBERT MCKEE

work, it would be unfair of me to demand that you to take me to the
limit. Instead I’d like a moment of pleasure, an insight or two, no more
than that. But if I give you important hours of my life, I expect you to
be an artist of power who can reach the boundaries of experience.”

In our effort to satisfy the audience’s need, to tell stories that
touch the innermost and outermost sources of life, two major
reversals are never enough. No matter the setting or scope of the
telling, no matter how international and epic or intimate and inte¬
rior, three major reversals are the necessary minimum for a full-
length work of narrative art to reach the end of the line.

Consider these rhythms: Things were bad, then they were
good—end of story. Or things were good, then they were bad—
end of story. Or things were bad, then they were very bad—end of
story. Or things were good, then they were very good—end of
story. In all four cases we feel something’s lacking. We know that
the second event, whether positively or negatively charged, is nei¬
ther the end nor the limit. Even if the second event kills the cast:
Things were good (or bad), then everyone died—end of story—it’s
not enough. “Okay, they're all dead. Now what?” we’re wondering.
The third turn is missing and we know we haven’t touched the
limit until at least one more major reversal occurs. Therefore, the
three-act story rhythm was the foundation of story art for centuries
before Aristotle noted it.

But it’s only a foundation, not a formula, so I’ll begin with it,
then delineate some of its infinite variations. The proportions I’ll
use are the rhythms of the feature film, but in principle they apply
equally to the play and novel. Again, I caution that these are
approximations, not formulas.

INCITING

INCIDENT

Central *
Plot:

Act 1

<

---70 Minutes--

Act II

Act III

30

100

118 120

1

ACT DESIGN + 219

The first act, the opening movement, typically consumes about
25 percent of the telling, the Act One Climax occurring between
twenty and thirty minutes into a 120-minute film. The last act
wants to be the shortest of all. In the ideal last act we want to give
the audience a sense of acceleration, a swiftly rising action to
Climax. If the writer tries to stretch out the last act, the pace of
acceleration is almost certain to slow in mid-movement. So last acts
are generally brief, twenty minutes or less.

Let's say a 120-minute film places its Central Plot's Inciting
Incident in the first minute, the Act One Climax at the thirty-
minute point, has an eighteen-minute Act Three, and a two-minute
Resolution to FADE OUT. This rhythm creates an Act Two that’s
seventy minutes long. If an otherwise well-told story bogs down,
that’s where it’ll happen—as the writer sloshes through the
swamps of the long second act. There are two possible -solutions:
Add subplots or more acts.

INCITING

INCIDENT Act 1 Act 11 Act III

Central ft t t

Plot: ! 30 100 118

INCITING

Sub- INCIDENT Act I

plot ♦ t

A: 1.25 r.60

INCITING

Sub- INCIDENT Act I Act II

plot t f t

B: 1 .15 45 .75

INCITING

Sub- INCIDENT Act I Actll j Act 111

p |ot t t * t

C: 1 ..50 90 118

Subplots have their own act structure, although usually brief.
Between the central plot’s three-act design above, let’s weave three
subplots: a one-act Subplot A with an Inciting Incident twenty-five
minutes into the film, climaxing and ending at sixty minutes; a

220 4 ROBERT MCKEE

two-act Subplot B with an Inciting Incident at the fifteen-minute
point, an Act One Climax at forty-five minutes, ending with an Act
Two Climax at seventy-five minutes; a three-act Subplot C is with
its Inciting Incident happening inside the Inciting Incident of the
Central Plot (lovers meet, for example, and start a subplot in the
same scene cops discover the crime that launches the central plot),
an Act One Climax at fifty minutes, an Act Two Climax at ninety
minutes, and a third act climaxing inside the Central Plot's last
Climax (the lovers decide to marry in the same scene that they
apprehend the criminal).

Although the Central Plot and three subplots may have up to
four different protagonists, an audience could empathize with all
of them, and each subplot raises its own Major Dramatic Ques¬
tion. So the interest and emotions of the audience are hooked,
held, and amplified by four stories. What’s more, the three sub¬
plots have five major reversals that fall between the Central Plot's
Act One and Act Two climaxes—more than enough storytelling to
keep the overall film progressing, deepen the involvement of the
audience, and tighten the soft belly of the Central Plot’s second
act.

On the other hand, not every film needs or wants a subplot:
THE FUGITIVE. How then does the writer solve the problem of
the long second act? By creating more acts. The three-act design is
the minimum. If the writer builds progressions to a major reversal
at the halfway point, he breaks the story into four movements with
no act more than thirty or forty minutes long. David's collapse after
performing Rachmaninoffs Piano Concerto No. 3 in SHINE is a
superb example. In Hollywood this technique is known as the Mid-
Act Climax, a term that sounds like sexual dysfunction, but means
a major reversal in the middle of Act Two, expanding the design
from three acts to an Ibsen-like rhythm of four acts, accelerating
the mid-film pace.

A film could have a Shakespearean rhythm of five acts: FOUR
WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL. Or more. RAIDERS OF THE
LOST ARK is in seven acts; THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE
& HER LOVER in eight. These films turn a major reversal every fif-

ACT DESIGN + 221

Central

Plot:

Centra]

Plot:

Central

Plot:

teen or twenty minutes, decisively solving the long second act
problem. But the five- to eight-act design is the exception, for the
cure of one problem is the cause of others.

SHINE:

INCITING

INCIDENT

t

Act I

(MID-ACT
CLIMAX)

t

Act II

Act III Act IV

1 30 60

Subplot

100 118 120

FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL:

INCITING

INCIDENT

^ Act 1

Act II

Act III

Act IV

ActV

1 25

50

75

100

118 120

THE COOK, THE THIEF. HIS WIFE & HER LOVER:

INCITING

INCIDENT

^ Act I Act II Act 111 Act IV Act V Act VI Act VII Act VIII

1 15 30 45 60 75 90 105 120

First, the multiplication of act climaxes invites cliches.

Generally, a three-act story requires four memorable scenes:
the Inciting Incident that opens the telling, and an Act One, Act
Two, and Act Three Climax. In the Inciting Incident of KRAMER
VS. KRAMER Mrs. Kramer walks out on her husband and her son.
Act One Climax: She returns, demanding custody of the child. Act
Two Climax: The court awards custody of the son to his mother.
Act Three Climax: Like her ex-husband, she realizes that they must
act selflessly for the best interest of the child they love and returns
the boy to Kramer. Four powerful turning points spanned with
excellent scenes and sequences.

222 « ROBERT MCKEE

When the writer multiplies acts, he’s forcing the invention of
five, perhaps six, seven, eight, nine, or more brilliant scenes. This
becomes a creative task beyond his reach, so he resorts to the
cliches that infest so many action films.

Second, the multiplication of acts reduces the impact

of climaxes and results in repetitiousness.

Even if the writer feels he’s up to creating a major reversal
every fifteen minutes, turning act climaxes on scenes of life and
death, life and death, life and death, life and death, life and death,
seven or eight times over, boredom sets in. Before too long the
audience is yawning: “That’s not a major turn. That’s his day. Every
fifteen minutes somebody tries to kill the guy.”

What is major is relative to what is moderate and minor. If
every scene screams to be heard, we go deaf. When too many
scenes strive to be powerhouse climaxes, what should be major
becomes minor, repetitious, running downhill to a halt. This is
why a three-act Central Plot with subplots has become a kind of
standard. It fits the creative powers of most writers, provides com¬
plexity, and avoids repetition.

Design Variations

First, stories vary according to the number of major reversals in the
telling: from the one- or two-act design of Miniplots, LEAVING
LAS VEGAS, through the three- or four-acts plus subplots of most
Archplots, THE VERDICT, to the seven or eight acts of many
action genres, SPEED, to the helter-skelter patterns of Antiplots,
THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, and beyond to
Multiplot films that have no Central Plot, THE JOY LUCK CLUB,
but may contain a dozen or more major Turning Points over their
various story lines.

Second, the shapes of stories vary according to the placement
of the Inciting Incident. Conventionally, the Inciting Incident
occurs very early in the telling and progressions build to a major

ACT DESIGN * 223

reversal at the Act One Climax twenty or thirty minutes later. This
pattern requires the writer to place two major scenes in the first
quarter of the film. However, the Inciting Incident may enter as
late as twenty, thirty, or more minutes into the telling. ROCKY, for
example, has a very late-arriving Central Plot Inciting Incident. The
effect of this is that the Inciting Incident becomes, in effect, the
first act Climax and serves two purposes.

Central

Plot:

Adrian's Subplot:

ROCKY:

Inciting

Incident

INCITING

INCIDENT

t

Act I

33

Act II Act III
90 105

This, however, cannot be done for the convenience of the
writer. The only reason to delay the entrance of the Central Plot is
the audience’s need to know the protagonist at length so it can fully
react to the Inciting Incident. If this is necessary, then a setup sub¬
plot must open the telling. ROCKY has one, the Adrian/Rocky Love
Story; CASABLANCA uses five with Laszlo, Ugarte, Yvonne, and
the Bulgarian wife as single protagonists and refugees as the plural
protagonist. Story must be told to hold the audience while it waits
for a late-arriving Central Plot to ripen.

Suppose, however, the ripe moment is reached somewhere
between the first and thirtieth minute. Does a film then need a
setup subplot to carry the opening? Maybe . . . maybe not. The
Inciting Incident of THE WIZARD OF OZ occurs at the fifteen-
minute mark when a cyclone carries Dorothy (Judy Garland) to
Munchkinland. There’s no subplot to set this up, rather we’re held
by dramatized exposition of her longing to go “somewhere over the
rainbow.” In ADAM’S RIB the Inciting Incident also arrives fifteen
minutes into the film, as district attorney Adam Bonner (Spencer
Tracy) and his defense attorney wife Amanda (Katharine Hepburn)

224 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

discover themselves on opposing sides of a trial. In this case, the
film opens with a setup subplot as defendant (Judy Holliday) dis¬
covers her husband’s philandering and shoots him. This hooks and
carries us to the Central Plot’s Inciting Incident.

With an Inciting Incident at the fifteen-minute point, does the
writer need a major reversal at the thirty-minute point? Maybe . . .
maybe not. In THE WIZARD OF OZ Dorothy is threatened by the
Wicked Witch of the West, given the red slippers, and sent on her
quest along the yellow brick road fifteen minutes after the Inciting
Incident. In ADAM’S RIB the next major reversal of the Central
Plot happens forty minutes after the Inciting Incident when
Amanda wins a key point in court. However, a relationship subplot
complicates this stretch as a composer (David Wayne), to Adam’s
great annoyance, flirts openly with Amanda.

The rhythm of act movements is established by the location of
the Central Plot’s Inciting Incident. Act structure, therefore, varies
enormously. The number and placement of the major reversals for
both main plot and subplots are choices made in the creative play
between artist and material, depending on quality and number of
protagonists, sources of antagonism, genre, and, ultimately, the
personality and worldview of the writer.

False Ending

Occasionally, especially in Action genres, at the Penultimate Act
Climax or within the last act’s movement, the writer creates a False
Ending: a scene so seemingly complete we think for a moment the
story is over. E.T. is dead—end of movie, we think. In ALIEN
Ripley blows up her spaceship and escapes, we think. In ALIENS
she blows up an entire planet and escapes, we hope. In BRAZIL
Jonathan (Sam Lowry) rescues Kim (Jill Layton) from a tyrannical
regime, the lovers embrace, happy ending ... or is it?

TERMINATOR devised a double False Ending: Reese (Michael
Biehn) and Sarah (Linda Hamilton) blow up the Terminator
(Arnold Schwarzenegger) with a tankard of gasoline, its flesh
burning away. The lovers celebrate. But then the chrome inner

ACT DESIGN + 225

version of this half-man/half-robot rises out of the flames. Reese
sacrifices his life to put a pipe bomb in the belly of the Terminator
and blow it in half. But then the creature’s torso revives and crawls
claw over claw toward the wounded heroine until Sarah finally
destroys him.

False Endings may even find their way into Art Films . Near the
climax of JESUS OF MONTREAL Daniel (Lothaire Bluteau), an
actor playing Christ in a Passion Play, is bludgeoned by his falling
crucifix. Other actors rush him unconscious to the emergency
room, but he awakes, resurrected, we pray.

Hitchcock loved False Endings, placing them unconventionally
early for shock effect. The “suicide” of Madeleine (Kim Novak) is
the Mid-Act Climax of VERTIGO before she reappears as Judy. The
shower murder of Marion (Janet Leigh) marks the Act One Climax
of PSYCHO, suddenly shifting genres from Caper to Psycho-Thriller
and switching protagonists from Marion to a plural protagonist of
the dead woman’s sister, lover, and a private eye.

For most films, however, the False Ending is inappropriate.
Instead, the Penultimate Act Climax should intensify the Major
Dramatic Question: “Now what’s going to happen?”

Act Rhythm

Repetitiousness is the enemy of rhythm. The dynamics of story
depend on the alternation of its value-charges. For example, the
two most powerful scenes in a story are the last two act climaxes.
Onscreen they’re often only ten or fifteen minutes apart. Therefore,
they cannot repeat the same charge. If the protagonist achieves his
Object of Desire, making the last act’s Story Climax positive, then
the Penultimate Act Climax must be negative. You cannot set up
an up-ending with an up-ending: “Things were wonderful. . . then
they got even better!” Conversely, if the protagonist fails to achieve
his desire, the Climax of the Penultimate Act cannot be negative.
You cannot set up a down-ending with a down-ending: “Things
were terrible . . . then they got even worse.” When emotional expe¬
rience repeats, the power of the second event is cut in half. And if

226 + ROBERT MCKEE

the power of the Story Climax is halved, the power of the film is
halved.

On the other hand, a story may climax in irony, an ending
that’s both positive and negative. What then must be the emotional
charge of the Penultimate Climax? The answer’s found in close
study of the Story Climax, for although irony is somewhat positive,
somewhat negative, it should never be balanced. If it is, the positive
and negative values cancel each other out and the story ends in a
bland neutrality.

For example, Othello finally achieves his desire: a wife who
loves him and has never betrayed him with another man—posi¬
tive. However, when he discovers this, it’s too late because he’s just
murdered her—an overall negative irony. Mrs. Soffel goes to
prison for the rest of her life—negative. But she goes into jail with
her head up because she’s achieved her desire, the transcendent
romantic experience—an overall positive irony. With careful
thought and feeling the writer studies his irony to make certain it
leans one way or the other, and then designs a Penultimate Climax
to contradict its overall emotional charge.

Working back from the Penultimate Climax to the opening
scene, previous act climaxes are further apart, often with subplot
and sequence climaxes coming into emotional play between them,
creating a unique rhythm of positive and negative turnings. Conse¬
quently, although we know that the Ultimate and Penultimate Cli¬
maxes must contradict each other, from story to story there is no
way to predict the charges of the other act climaxes. Each film finds
its own rhythm and all variations are possible.

Subplots and Multiple Plots

A subplot receives less emphasis and screentime than a Central
Plot, but often it’s the invention of a subplot that lifts a troubled
screenplay to a film worth making. WITNESS, for example,
without its Love Story subplot of big-city cop and Amish widow
would be a less than compelling Thriller. Multiplot films, on the
other hand, never develop a Central Plot; rather they weave

ACT DESIGN + 22J

together a number of stories of subplot size. Between the Central
Plot and its subplots or between the various plot lines of a Multi¬
plot, four possible relationships come into play.

A subplot may be used to contradict the Controlling
Idea of the Central Plot and thus enrich the film with
irony.

Suppose you were writing a happy-ending Love Story with the
Controlling Idea “Love triumphs because the lovers sacrifice their
needs for each other.” You believe in your characters, their pas¬
sion and self-sacrifice, yet you feel the story’s becoming too
sweet, too pat. To balance the telling, you might then create a
subplot of two other characters whose love ends tragically
because they betray each other out of emotional greed. This down¬
ending subplot contradicts the up-ending Central Plot, making
the film’s overall meaning more complex and ironic: “Love cuts
two ways: we possess it when we give it freedom, but destroy it
with possessiveness.”

Subplots may be used to resonate the Controlling Idea
of the Central Plot and enrich the film with variations on
a theme.

If a subplot expresses the same Controlling Idea as the main
plot, but in a different, perhaps unusual way, it creates a variation
that strengthens and reinforces the theme. All the many love sto¬
ries in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, for example, end hap¬
pily—but some sweetly, some farcically, some sublimely.

The principle of thematic contradiction and variation is the
genesis of Multiplot films. A Multiplot has no Central Plot Spine to
structurally unify the telling. Instead, a number of plot lines either
cross-cut, as in SHORT CUTS, or connect via a motif such as the
twenty-dollar bill that passes from story to story in TWENTY
BUCKS or the series of swimming pools that link the tales in THE
SWIMMER—a collection of “ribs” but no individual plot line

228 4 ROBERT MCKEE

strong enough to carry from first scene to last. What then holds the
film together? An idea.

PARENTHOOD plays variations on the notion that in the game
of parenthood you cannot win. Steve Martin plays the world’s most
attentive father whose child still ends up in therapy. Jason Robards
plays the world’s most neglectful father whose kid comes back late
in life needing him, then betraying him. Dianne Wiest portrays a
mother who tries to make all the safe life decisions for her child,
but the child knows better than she does. All parents can do is love
their children, support them, pick them up when they fall. But
there’s no such thing as winning this game.

DINER resonates with the idea that men cannot communicate
with women. Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) cannot bring himself to speak
to a woman. Boogie (Mickey Rourke) talks nonstop to women, but
only to get them into bed. Eddie (Steve Guttenberg) won’t marry
his fiancee until she can pass a test in football trivia. When Billy
(Timothy Daly) faces his emotional issues with the woman he
loves, he lets his guard down and talks honestly with her. Once able
to communicate with a woman, he leaves his friends—a resolution
that contradicts all others to add a layer of irony.

The Multiplot frames an image of a particular society, but,
unlike the static Nonplot, it weaves small stories around an idea, so
that these group photos vibrate with energy. DO THE RIGHT
THING depicts the universality of big-city racism; SHORT CUTS
landscapes the soullessness of the American middle class; EAT
DRINK MAN WOMAN paints a triptych of the father/daughter
relationship. Multiplot gives the writer the best of both worlds: a
portrait that captures the essence of a culture or community along
with ample narrative drive to compel interest.

When the Central Plot's Inciting Incident must be
delayed, a setup subplot may be needed to open the
storytelling.

A late-arriving Central Plot—ROCKY, CHINATOWN, CASA¬
BLANCA—leaves a story vacuum for the first thirty minutes that

ACT DESIGN + 229

must be filled by subplots to engage the audience’s interest and
acquaint it with the protagonist and his world in order to evoke a
full reaction to its Inciting Incident. A setup subplot dramatizes the
Central Plot’s exposition so that it’s absorbed in a fluid, indirect
manner.

A subplot may be used to complicate the Central Plot.

This fourth relationship is the most important: use of the subplot
as an additional source of antagonism. For example, the Love Story
typically found inside Crime Stories: In SEA OF LOVE Frank Keller (A1
Pacino) falls in love with Helen (Ellen Barkin). While hunting down
her psychotic ex-husband, he risks his life to protect the woman he
loves. In BLACK WIDOW a federal agent (Debra Winger) becomes
infatuated with the killer herself (Theresa Russell). In THE VER¬
DICT, a Courtroom Drama , Frank (Paul Newman) falls in love with
Laura (Charlotte Rampling), a spy from the opposing law firm. These
subplots add dimension to characters, create comic or romantic relief
from the tensions or violence of the Central Plot, but their primary
purpose is to make life more difficult for the protagonist.

The balance of emphasis between the Central Plot and subplot
has to be carefully controlled, or the writer risks losing focus on the
primary story. A setup subplot is particularly dangerous in that it
may mislead the audience as to genre. The opening Love Story of
ROCKY, for example, was carefully handled so that we knew we
were heading for the Sports Genre.

Additionally, if the protagonists of the Central Plot and subplot
are not the same character, care must be taken not to draw too
much empathy to the subplot's protagonist. CASABLANCA, for
example, has a Political Drama subplot involving the fate of Victor
Laszlo (Paul Heinreid) and a Thriller subplot centered on Ugarte
(Peter Lorre), but both were deemphasized to keep the emotional
spotlight on the Central Plot’s Love Story of Rick (Humphrey
Bogart) and lisa (Ingrid Bergman). To deemphasize a subplot,
some of its elements—Inciting Incident, act climaxes, Crisis,
Climax, or Resolution—may be kept offscreen.

230 4 ROBERT MCKEE

If, on the other hand, as you develop your screenplay, your sub¬
plot seems to demand greater focus and empathy, then reconsider
the overall design and turn your subplot into the Central Plot.

If a subplot doesn’t thematically contradict or resonate the Con¬
trolling Idea of the main plot, if it doesn’t set up the introduction of
the main plot’s Inciting Incident, or complicate the action on the
main plot, if it merely runs alongside, it will split the story down
the middle and destroy its effect. The audience understands the
principle of aesthetic unity. It knows that every story element is
there because of the relationship it strikes to every other element.
This relationship, structural or thematic, holds the work together.
If the audience can’t find it, it’ll disengage from the story and con¬
sciously try to force a unity. When this fails, it sits in confusion.

In the screen adaptation of the best-selling Psycho-Thriller THE
FIRST DEADLY SIN, the Central Plot takes a police lieutenant
(Frank Sinatra) on the hunt for a serial killer. In a subplot, his wife
(Faye Dunaway) is in intensive care with only weeks to live. The
detective hunts for the killer, then commiserates with his dying
wife; he hunts the killer, then reads to his wife; he hunts for the
killer some more, then visits her in the hospital again. Before long
this alternating story design ignited a burning curiosity in the audi¬
ence: When will the killer come to the hospital? But he never does.
Instead, the wife dies, the cop catches the killer, plot and subplot
never connect, and the audience is left in disgruntled confusion.

In Lawrence Sanders’ novel, however, this design succeeds
with powerful effect because on the page main plot and subplot
complicate each other in the mind of the protagonist : the cop’s fierce
preoccupation with a psychotic killer conflicts with a desperate
desire to give his wife the comfort she needs, while at the same
time his dread of losing her and the pain of watching the woman
he loves suffer contradicts his need for clear, rational deduction in
pursuit of a ruthless but brilliant lunatic. A novelist can enter a
character’s mind and in first- or third-person delineate inner con¬
flict directly in prose description. The screenwriter cannot.

The screenwriting is the art of making the mental physical We
create visual correlatives for inner conflict—not dialogue or narra-

ACT DESIGN 4 231

tion to describe ideas and emotions, but images of character choice
and action to indirectly and ineffably express the thoughts and feel¬
ings within. Therefore, the interior life a novel must be reinvented
for the screen.

In adapting Manuel Puig's novel KISS OF THE SPIDER
WOMAN, screenwriter Leonard Schrader was faced with a similar
structural problem. Once again, main plot and subplot complicate
one another only within the mind of the protagonist. The subplot, in
fact, is Luis’ (William Hurt) fantasies of the Spider Woman (Sonia
Braga), a character he idolizes, drawn from films he vaguely remem¬
bers and greatly embellishes. Schrader visualizes Luis’ dreams and
desires by turning his fantasy into a film-within-the-film.

Still, these two plots cannot causally interact because they're on
different planes of reality. They are connected, however, by making
the subplot’s story mirror the Central Plot. This gives Luis the
chance to act out his fantasy in reality. At that moment the two
plots collide in Luis’ psyche and the audience imagines the emo¬
tional battle raging within: Will Luis do in life what the Spider
Woman did in his dreams? Will he too betray the man he loves?
What’s more, the two plotlines ironize the Controlling Idea of Love
Through Self sacrifice and give the film an added thematic unity.

There’s yet another revealing exception in the design of KISS
OF THE SPIDER WOMAN. In principle, the Central Plot’s
Inciting Incident must be onscreen. But here the Inciting Incident
is not revealed until the Mid-Act Climax. In the Backstory Luis, a
homosexual convict imprisoned in a fascist dictatorship, is called
into the warden’s office and made this offer: A leftist revolutionary,
Valentin (Raul Julia), will be put in his cell. If Luis spies on him
and gets valuable information, the warden will give Luis his
freedom. The audience, unaware of this deal, waits through the
first hour of the film to finally discover this Central Plot when Luis
visits the warden asking for medicine and camomile tea for the
ailing Valentin.

For many this film began so tediously they nearly walked out.
So why not open conventionally with the Inciting Incident, as does
the novel, and start the story with a strong hook? Because, if

232 4 ROBERT MCKEE

Schrader had placed the scene in which Luis agrees to spy on a
freedom fighter at the opening of the film, the audience would
have instantly hated the protagonist. With a choice of a fast opening
versus empathy for the protagonist, the screenwriter violated the
design of the novel. While the novelist used inner narration to gain
empathy, the screenwriter knew that he would first have to con¬
vince the audience that Luis loved Valentin before revealing Luis’
pact with the fascists. The right choice. Without empathy the film
would be a hollow exercise in exotic photography.

Faced with irreconcilable choices, such as pace versus empathy,
the wise writer redesigns the story to preserve what’s vital. You’re
free to break or bend convention, but for one reason only: to put
something more important in its place.

10

SCENE DESIGN

This chapter focuses on the components of scene design: Turning
Points, Setups/Payoffs, Emotional Dynamics, and Choice. Chapter n
will analyze two scenes to demonstrate how Beats, changing char¬
acter behaviors, shape a scene's inner life.

TURNING POINTS

A scene is a story in miniature—an action through conflict in a
unity or continuity of time and space that turns the value-charged
condition of a character’s life. In theory there's virtually no limit to
a scene's length or locations. A scene may be infinitesimal. In the
right context a scene consisting of a single shot in which a hand
turns over a playing card could express great change. Conversely,
ten minutes of action spread over a dozen sites on a battlefield
may accomplish much less. No matter locations or length, a scene
is unified around desire, action, conflict, and change.

In each scene a character pursues a desire related to his imme¬
diate time and place. But this Scene-Objective must be an aspect of
his Super-Objective or Spine, the story-long quest that spans from
Inciting Incident to Story Climax. Within the scene, the character
acts on his Scene-Objective by choosing under pressure to take
one action or another. However, from any or all levels of conflict
comes a reaction he didn't anticipate. The effect is to crack open
the gap between expectation and result, turning his outer for¬
tunes, inner life, or both from the positive to the negative or the

233

234 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

negative to the positive in terms of values the audience under¬
stands are at risk.

A scene causes change in a minor, albeit significant way. A
Sequence Climax is a scene that causes a moderate reversal—
change with more impact than a scene. An Act Climax is a scene
that causes a major reversal—change with greater impact than
Sequence Climax. Accordingly, we never write a scene that’s
merely a flat, static display of exposition; rather we strive for this
ideal: to create a story design in which every scene is a minor, mod¬
erate, or major Turning Point.

TRADING PLACES: The value at stake is wealth. Inspired by
Porgy and Bess, Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) begs on the
streets, pretending to be a paraplegic on a skateboard. A gap opens
when police try to bust him, then widens enormously when two
elderly businessmen, the Duke brothers (Ralph Bellamy and Don
Ameche), suddenly intervene with the cops to save him. Billy’s beg¬
ging has caused his world to react differently and more powerfully
than he expected. He doesn’t resist, but wisely chooses to sur¬
render to the gap. CUT TO: A walnut-paneled office where the
Duke brothers have dressed him in a three-piece suit and made
him a commodities broker. Billy's financial life goes from beggar to
broker around this delightful Turning Point.

WALL STREET: The values at stake are wealth and honesty. A
young stockbroker, Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), secures a meeting
with billionaire Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). Bud lives from
paycheck to paycheck, but his integrity is intact. When he proposes
legitimate business ideas, his sales pitch provokes forces of antago¬
nism he couldn’t anticipate as Gekko retorts: “Tell me something I
don’t know.” Suddenly Bud realizes Gekko doesn’t want to do
honest business. He pauses, then reveals a corporate secret that his
own father had told him. Bud chooses to join Gekko in an unlawful
conspiracy, reversing his inner nature from honest to criminal and
his fortunes from poor to rich around this powerful and ironic
Turning Point.

The effects of Turning Points are fourfold: surprise, increased
curiosity, insight, and new direction.

SCENE DESIGN + 235

When a gap opens between expectation and result, it jolts the
audience with surprise. The world has reacted in a way neither
character nor audience had foreseen. This moment of shock
instantly provokes curiosity as the audience wonders “Why?”
TRADING PLACES: Why are these two old men saving this beggar
from the police? WALL STREET: Why is Gekko saying: “Tell me
something I don’t know." In an effort to satisfy its curiosity, the
audience rushes back through what story it’s seen so far, seeking
answers. In a beautifully designed story, these answers have been
quietly but carefully layered in.

TRADING PLACES: Our thoughts flit back to previous scenes
with the Duke brothers and we realize that these old men are so
bored with life they’ll use their wealth to play sadistic games. Fur¬
ther, they must have seen a spark of genius in this beggar or they
wouldn’t have picked him to be their pawn.

WALL STREET: The “why?” provoked by Gekko’s “Tell me
something I don't know” is instantly answered by this insight: Of
course Gekko’s a billionaire, he’s a crook. Almost no one becomes
immensely rich honestly. He too likes games ... of a criminal
kind. When Bud joins him, our memory dashes back to previous
scenes at his office, and we realize that Bud was too ambitious and
greedy—ripe for a fall.

The nimble and perceptive mind of the audience finds these
answers in a flash of understanding. The question “Why?” propels
it back through the story, and what it’s seen so far instantly clicks
into a new configuration; it experiences a rush of insight into char¬
acter and world, a satisfying layer of hidden truth.

Insight adds to curiosity. This new understanding amplifies the
questions “What’s going to happen next?" and “How will this turn
out?” This effect, true in all genres, is vividly clear in Crime Stories.
Someone goes to a closet for a clean shirt and a dead body falls out.
This huge gap triggers a fusillade of questions: “Who committed
this murder? How? When? Why? Will the killer be caught?” The
writer must now satisfy the curiosity he’s created. From each point
of changed value, he must move his story in a new direction to
create Turning Points yet to come.

236 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

KRAMER VS. KRAMER: The moment we see that a thirty-two-
year-old man can’t make breakfast the scene turns. The question
“Why?” sends us back through the few minutes of film that pre¬
cede the gap. Armed with our life experience and common sense,
we seek answers.

First, Kramer’s a workaholic, but many workaholics make
excellent breakfasts at five a.m. before anyone else is up. More, he’s
never contributed to his family’s domestic life, but many men don’t
and their wives remain loyal, respecting their husbands’ efforts to
provide income. Our deeper insight is this: Kramer is a child. He’s
a spoiled-rotten brat whose mother always made breakfast for him.
Later her role was filled by girlfriends and waitresses. Now he’s
turned his wife into a waitress/mother. Women have spoiled Kramer
all his life and he’s been only too happy to let them. Joanna Kramer
was, in essence, raising two children, and overwhelmed by the
impossibility of a mature relationship, she abandoned the mar¬
riage. What’s more, we feel she was right to do it. New direction:
Kramer’s growth into manhood.

The Climax of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK propels the
longest rush for insight I know. As Darth Vader (David Prowse/
James Earl Jones) and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) fight to the
death with light sabers, Vader steps back and says: “You can’t kill
me, Luke, I’m your father.” The word “father” explodes one of the
most famous gaps in film history and hurls the audience back
through two whole films separated by three years. Instantly we
grasp why Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) was so worried
about what would happen if Darth and Luke ever met face to face.
We know why Yoda (voice of Frank Oz) was so desperate to teach
Luke command of the Force. We realize why Luke's had so many
close escapes: His father has been secretly protecting him. Two
films that made perfect sense to this moment now have a new,
deeper layer of meaning. New direction: RETURN OF THE JEDI.

CHINATOWN: Before the Act Two Climax we believe that
Mulwray was murdered either for financial gain or in a jealous
rage. But when Evelyn says: “She’s my sister and my daughter . . .”
the gap splits with a shock. To understand her words, we race back

SCENE DESIGN * 237

through the film and gain a powerful set of insights: incest
between father and daughter, the real motivation for the murder,
and the identity of the killer. New direction: the corkscrew twists of
Act Three.

The Question of Self-Expression

A storyteller puts a friendly arm around the audience, saying: “Let
me show you something.” He takes us to a scene, such as the one
in CHINATOWN, and says: “Watch Gittes drive to Santa Monica,
intent on arresting Evelyn. When he knocks on her door, do you
think he’ll be invited in? Watch this. Now the beautiful Evelyn
comes downstairs, happy to see him. Think he’ll soften and let her
off the hook? Watch this. Next she fights to protect her secret.
Think she’ll keep it? Watch this. As he listens to her confession,
will he help her or arrest her? Watch this.”

The storyteller leads us into expectation, makes us think we
understand, then cracks open reality, creating surprise and
curiosity, sending us back through his story again and again. On
each trip back, we gain deeper and deeper insight into the natures
of his characters and their world—a sudden awareness of the inef¬
fable truths that lie hidden beneath the film’s images. He then
takes his story in a new direction in an ever-escalating progression
of such moments.

To tell story is to make a promise: If you give me your concen¬
tration, I’ll give you surprise followed by the pleasure of discov¬
ering life, its pains and joys, at levels and in directions you have
never imagined. And most important, this must be done with such
seeming ease and naturalness that we lead the audience to these
discoveries as if spontaneously. The effect of a beautifully turned
moment is that filmgoers experience a rush of knowledge as if they
did it for themselves. In a sense they did. Insight is the audience's
reward for paying attention, and a beautifully designed story
delivers this pleasure scene after scene after scene.

Yet, if we were to ask writers how they express themselves,
more often than not they’ll reply: “With my words. My descriptions

238 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

of the world and the dialogue I create for my characters. I’m a
writer. I express myself in language.” But language is merely our
text. First, last, and always, self-expression occurs in the flood of
insight that pours out of a Turning Point. Here the writer opens
his arms to the world, saying: “This is my vision of life, of the
nature of the human beings that inhabit my world. This is what I
think happens to people in these circumstances for these reasons.
My ideas, my emotions. Me.” Our most powerful means of self-
expression is the unique way we turn the story.

Then come words. We apply our literary talent with vividness
and skill, so that when a beautifully written scene is acted, the audi¬
ence is carried willingly and pleasurably through our Turning
Points. As important as language is, however, it’s only the surface
by which we capture the reader to lead him to the inner life of the
story. Language is a tool for self-expression and must never
become a decorative end of its own.

Imagine now the difficulties of designing a story so that thirty,
forty, fifty times over, scenes turn in minor, moderate, or major
ways, each expressing an aspect of our vision. This is why weak sto¬
rytelling resorts to substituting information for insight. Why many
writers choose to explain their meanings out of the mouths of their
characters, or worse, in voice-over narration. Such writing is always
inadequate. It forces characters to a phony, self-conscious knowl¬
edge rarely found in actuality. More important, even exquisite, per¬
ceptive prose cannot substitute for the global insight that floods the
mind when we match our life experiences against an artist's well-
placed setup.

SETUPS/PAYOFFS

To express our vision scene by scene we crack open the surface of
our fictional reality and send the audience back to gain insight.
These insights, therefore, must be shaped into Setups and Payoffs.
To set up means to layer in knowledge; to pay off means to close
the gap by delivering that knowledge to the audience. When the
gap between expectation and result propels the audience back

SCENE DESIGN + 239

through the story seeking answers, it can only find them if the
writer has prepared or planted these insights in the work.

CHINATOWN: When Evelyn Mulwray says: “She's my sister
and my daughter,” we instantly remember a scene between her
father and Gittes in which the detective asks Noah Cross what he
and his son-in-law were arguing about the day before Mulwray was
murdered. Cross replies, “My daughter.” The first time we hear
this, we think he means Evelyn. In a flash, we now realize he
meant Katherine, his daughter by his daughter. Cross said it
knowing that Gittes would draw the wrong conclusion, and, by
implication, would suspect Evelyn of the murder he committed.

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: When Darth Vader reveals that
he's Luke's father, we rush back to the scenes in which Ben Kenobi
and Yoda are greatly troubled over Luke’s command of the Force,
fearing, we presume, for the young man's safety. We now realize
that Luke’s mentors were actually concerned for his soul, dreading
that his father would seduce him to the “dark side.”

SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS: John L. Sullivan is a film director
with a string of hits such as So Long , Sarong and Ants in Your
Pants of 1939. Conscience-stricken by the appalling condition of
the world, Sullivan determines that his next film must have
“social significance.” Angry studio bosses point out that he's
from Hollywood and therefore doesn’t know anything about
“social significance.”

So Sullivan decides to do research. He trudges off into
America, followed by an air-conditioned travel van, equipped with
his butler, cook, secretary, girlfriend, and a press agent intent on
turning Sullivan’s lunatic adventure into a publicity stunt. Then, in
a case of mistaken identity, Sullivan’s thrown on a chain gang in
the swamps of Louisiana. Suddenly he’s up to his nostrils in “social
significance” without a dime to call his agent.

One evening Sullivan hears uproarious laughter coming from a
building in the prison compound and discovers a makeshift movie
theatre filled with his fellow prisoners laughing themselves help¬
less at a Mickey Mouse cartoon. His face drops as he realizes that
these men do not need “social significance” from him. They have

240 4 ROBERT MCKEE

more than enough in their lives already. What they need is what he
does best—good light entertainment.

With this brilliant reversal, we're swept back through the film
coming to Sullivan's insight . . . and much more. As we gather in
all the scenes that satirize Hollywood aristocracy, we realize that
commercial films that presume to instruct society on how to solve
its shortcomings are certain to be false. For, with few exceptions,
most filmmakers, like Sullivan, are not interested in the suffering
poor as much as the picturesque poor.

Setups must be handled with great care. They must be planted
in such a way that when the audience first sees them, they have
one meaning, but with a rush of insight, they take on a second,
more important meaning. It’s possible, in fact, that a single setup
may have meanings hidden to a third or fourth level.

CHINATOWN: When we meet Noah Cross, he's a murder sus¬
pect, but he’s also a father worried about his daughter. When Evelyn
reveals their incest, we then realize Cross’s true concern is Katherine.
In Act Three, when Cross uses his wealth to block Gittes and capture
Katherine, we realize that under Cross’s previous scenes lurked a
third level, a madness driven by the virtually omnipotent power to
escape justice while committing murder. In the final scene, when
Cross draws Katherine into the shadows of Chinatown, we realize
that festering under all this grotesque corruption has been Cross’s
lust to have incest with the offspring of his own incest.

Setups must be planted firmly enough so that when the audi¬
ence’s mind hurls back, they’re remembered. If setups are too
subtle, the audience will miss the point. If too heavy-handed, the
audience will see the Turning Point coming a mile away. Turning
Points fail when we overprepare the obvious and underprepare the
unusual.

Additionally, the firmness of the setup must be adjusted to the
target audience. We set up more prominently for youth audiences,
because they're not as story literate as middle-aged filmgoers.
Bergman, for example, is difficult for the young—not because they
couldn’t grasp his ideas if they were explained, but because
Bergman never explains. He dramatizes his ideas subtly, using

SCENE DESIGN « 241

setups intended for the well-educated, socially experienced, and
psychologically sophisticated.

Once the setup closes the gap, that payoff will, in all proba¬
bility, become yet another setup for payoffs ahead.

CHINATOWN: When Evelyn reveals her child by incest, she
repeatedly warns Gittes that her father is dangerous, that Gittes
doesn’t know what he’s dealing with. We then realize that Cross
killed Mulwray in a fight for possession of the child. This Act Two
payoff sets up an Act Three Climax in which Gittes fails to appre¬
hend Cross, Evelyn is killed, and the father/grandfather pulls the
terrified Katherine into the darkness.

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: When Darth Vader reveals
himself to Luke, this pays off multiple setups strung back through
two films. In an instant, however, this also becomes the setup for
Luke’s next action. What will the young hero do? He chooses to try
to kill his father, but Darth Vader cuts off his son’s hand—a payoff
to set up the next action. Now defeated, what will Luke do? He
hurls himself out of the sky city, trying to commit an honorable
suicide—a payoff to set up the next action. Will he die? No, he’s
rescued virtually in mid-air by his friends. This stroke of luck pays
off the suicide and becomes the setup for a third film to resolve the
conflict between father and son.

SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS: When Sullivan realizes what a preten¬
tious fool he’s been, this pays off all the arrogant folly underlying
the previous acts. It in turn sets up his next action. How will he
escape the chain gang? His discovery of who he really is puts his
head back in the Hollywood groove. He realizes, like any Holly¬
wood pro, that the way out of prison, indeed out of any trouble, is
publicity. Sullivan confesses to a murder he didn’t commit to get
back into court and the limelight of the press so the studio bosses
and their powerhouse attorneys can rescue him. This payoff sets up
the Resolution scene where we see Sullivan back in the Hollywood
harness, making the fluffy entertainment films he has always
made—but now he knows why.

The juggling act of setting up, paying off, setting up again and
paying off again often sparks our most creative flashes.

242 4 ROBERT MCKEE

Suppose you were developing a story about orphaned brothers,
Mark and Michael, who are raised from infancy in a brutal institu¬
tion. The brothers are inseparable, protecting and supporting each
other through the years. Then they escape the orphanage. Now on the
streets they struggle to survive while always defending each other.
Mark and Michael love each other, and you love them. But you have a
problem: no story. This is a portrait entitled: “Two brothers against
the world.” The only variation in the repetitious demonstration of
their fraternal loyalty is its location. Nothing essential changes.

But, as you stare at your open-ended chain-link of episodes, you
have a crazy idea: “What if Mark stabbed Michael in the back?
Ripped him off, took his money, his girl. . Now you’re pacing,
arguing: “That’s stupid! They love each other. Fought the world
together. Makes no sense! Still, it’d be great. Forget it. But it’d be a
hell of a scene. Cut it out. It’s not logical!”

Then the light goes on: “I could make it logical. I could go back
through everything and layer that in. Two brothers against the
world? What about Cain and Abel? Sibling rivalry? I could rewrite
from the opening and under every scene slip a bitter taste of envy
in Mark, superiority and arrogance in Michael. All quietly there
behind the sweet loyalty. If I do it well, when Mark betrays Mike,
the audience will glimpse that repressed jealousy in Mark and it’ll
all make sense.”

Now your characters aren’t repeating but growing. Perhaps you
realize you’re finally expressing what you really feel toward your
own brother and couldn’t admit. Still, it’s not over. Suddenly, out of
the blue, a second thought: “If Mark betrays Mike, that could be the
Penultimate Climax. And that Climax could set up a last act Story
Climax in which Mike takes his revenge and . . .” You’ve found
your story because you’ve allowed yourself to think the unthink¬
able. In storytelling, logic is retroactive.

In story, unlike life, you can always go back and fix it. You can
set up what may seem absurd and make it rational. Reasoning is
secondary and postcreativity. Primary and preconditional to every¬
thing else is imagination—the willingness to think any crazy idea,
to let images that may or may not make sense find their way to you.

SCENE DESIGN + 243

Nine out of ten will be useless. Yet one illogical idea may put but¬
terflies in your belly, a flutter that’s telling you something won¬
derful is hidden in this mad notion. In an intuitive flash you see
the connection and realize you can go back and make it make
sense. Logic is child’s play. Imagination takes you to the screen.

EMOTIONAL TRANSITIONS

We do not move the emotions of an audience by putting glistening
tears in a character’s eyes, by writing exuberant dialogue so an
actor can recite his joy, by describing an erotic embrace, or by
calling for angry music. Rather, we render the precise experience
necessary to cause an emotion, then take the audience through that
experience. For Turning Points not only deliver insight, they create
the dynamics of emotion.

The understanding of how we create the audience’s emotional
experience begins with the realization that there are only two emo¬
tions—pleasure and pain. Each has its variations: joy, love, happi¬
ness, rapture, fun, ecstasy, thrill, bliss, and many others on one
hand, and anguish, dread, anxiety, terror, grief, humiliation,
malaise, misery, stress, remorse, and many others on the other
hand. But at heart life gives us only one or the other.

As audience, we experience an emotion when the telling takes
us through a transition of values. First, we must empathize with
the character. Second, we must know what the character wants and
want the character to have it. Third, we must understand the values
at stake in the character’s life. Within these conditions, a change in
values moves our emotions.

Suppose a comedy were to begin with a poverty-stricken protag¬
onist at the negative in terms of the value of wealth. Then over
scene, sequence, or act, his life undergoes change to the positive, a
transition from poor to rich. As the audience watches this character
move toward his desire, the transition from less to more will lift it
into a positive emotional experience.

As soon as this plateau is reached, however, emotion quickly
dissipates. An emotion is a relatively short-term, energetic experi-

244 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

ence that peaks and burns and is over. Now the audience is
thinking: “Terrific. He’s rich. What happens next?”

Next, the story must turn in a new direction to shape a transi¬
tion from positive to negative that’s deeper than his previous pen¬
niless state. Perhaps the protagonist falls from riches into debt to
the mafia, far worse than poverty. As this transition moves from
more to less than nothing, the audience will have a negative emo¬
tional response. However, once the protagonist owes all to a loan
shark, the audience’s emotion wanes as it thinks: “Bad move. He
blew the money and owes the mob. What’s going to happen next?”

Now the story must turn in yet another new direction. Perhaps
he escapes his debt by impersonating the Don and taking over the
mob. As the telling makes the transition from the doubly negative
to the ironically positive, the audience has an even stronger positive
emotion. Story must create these dynamic alternations between
positive and negative emotion in order to obey the Law of Dimin¬
ishing Returns.

The Law of Diminishing Returns, true in life as well as in story,
is this: The more often we experience something , the less effect it has.
Emotional experience, in other words, cannot be repeated back-to-
back with effect. The first ice cream cone tastes great; the second
isn’t bad; the third makes you sick. The first time we experience an
emotion or sensation it has its full effect. If we try to repeat this
experience immediately, it has half or less than half of its full
effect. If we go straight to the same emotion for the third time, it
not only doesn’t have the original effect, it delivers the opposite
effect.

Suppose a story contains three tragic scenes contiguously.
What would be the effect? In the first, we shed tears; in the second,
we sniffle; in the third, we laugh . . . loudly. Not because the third
scene isn’t sad—it may be the saddest of the three—but because
the previous two have drained us of grief and we find it insensitive,
if not ludicrous, of the storyteller to expect us to cry yet again. The
repetition of “serious” emotion is, in fact, a favorite comic device.

Although comedy may seem the exception to this principle in
that we often seem to laugh repeatedly, it’s not. Laughter is not an

SCENE DESIGN « 245

emotion. Joy is an emotion. Laughter is a criticism we hurl at
something we find ridiculous or outrageous. It may occur inside
any emotion, from terror to love. Nor do we laugh without relief. A
joke has two parts: setup and punch. The setup raises the tension
in the audience, if only for a moment, through danger, sex, the
scatological—a host of taboos—then the punch explodes laughter.
This is the secret to comic timing: When is the setup ripe to hit the
punchline or gag? The comic senses this intuitively, but one thing
he learns objectively is that he can’t deliver punch, punch, punch
without wearing out his welcome.

There is, however, one exception: a story can go from positive
to positive or negative to negative, if the contrast between these
events is so great, in retrospect the first takes on shades of its oppo¬
site. Consider these two events: Lovers argue and break up. Nega¬
tive. Next, one kills the other. The second turn is so powerfully
negative that the argument begins to seem positive. In the light of
the murder, the audience will look back at the breakup and think:
“At least they were talking then."

If the contrast between emotional charges is great, events can
move from positive to positive without sentimentality, or from neg¬
ative to negative without forced seriousness. However, if the pro¬
gression changes only by degree, as it normally would, then a
repeated emotion has half its expected effect, and if repeated yet
again, the charge unfortunately reverses itself.

The Law of Diminishing Returns is true of everything in life,
except sex, which seems endlessly repeatable with effect.

Once a transition of value creates an emotion, feeling comes into
play. Although they’re often mistaken for each other, feeling is not
emotion. Emotion is a short-term experience that peaks and bums
rapidly. Feeling is a long-term, pervasive, sentient background that
colors whole days, weeks, even years of our lives. Indeed, a specific
feeling often dominates a personality. Each of the core emotions in
life—pleasure and pain—has many variations. So which particular
negative or positive emotion will we experience? The answer is found
in the feeling that surrounds it. For, like adding pigment to a pencil
sketch or an orchestra to a melody, feeling makes emotion specific.

246 4 ROBERT MCKEE

Suppose a man is feeling good about life, his relationships and
career both going well. Then he receives a message that his lover
has died. He’ll grieve but in time recover and go on with life. On
the other hand, suppose his days are dark, stressed, and depressed
by everything he tries. Then suddenly he receives a message that
his lover has died. Well. . .he might join her.

In film, feeling is known as mood. Mood is created in the
film’s text: the quality of light and color, tempo of action and
editing, casting, style of dialogue, production design, and musical
score. The sum of all these textural qualities creates a particular
mood. In general, mood, like setups, is a form of foreshadowing, a
way of preparing or shaping the audience’s anticipations. Moment
by moment, however, while the dynamic of the scene determines
whether the emotion it causes is positive or negative, the mood
makes this emotion specific.

This sketch, for example, is designed to create a positive emo¬
tion: Estranged lovers haven’t spoken to each other for over a year.
Without her, his life’s taken a dangerous turn. Desperate and
broke, he comes to her, hoping to borrow money. The scene begins
at the negative in two values: his survival and their love.

He knocks on her door. She sees him on the step and refuses
to let him in. He makes a noise loud enough to disturb the neigh¬
bors, hoping to embarrass her into letting him in. She picks up a
phone and threatens to call the police. He calls her bluff, shouting
through the door that he is in such deep trouble prison may be the
only safe place for him. She shouts back that that's fine with her.

Frightened and angry, he smashes through the door. But from
the look on her face, he realizes this is no way to borrow money
from anybody. He frantically explains that loan sharks are threat¬
ening to break his arms and his legs. Rather than sympathizing,
she laughs and tells him she hopes they break his head as well. He
bursts into tears and crawls to her, begging. The mad look on his
face frightens her and she takes a gun out of a drawer to scare him
off. He laughs, saying he remembers giving her the gun a year ago
and the firing pin was broken. She laughs, saying she had it fixed
and blows up the lamp next to him to prove it.

SCENE DESIGN + 247

He grabs her wrist and they fall to floor wrestling for the gun,
rolling over each other, until suddenly an emotion they haven’t felt
for over a year ignites and they start to make love on the floor next to
the smashed lamp and shattered door. A little voice in his head says,
“This could work,” but then a gap opens between him .. . and his
body. That, she thinks, smiling, is his real problem. Moved to pity
and affection, she decides to take him back into her life. The scene
ends on the positive: He has her help to survive, their love is restored.

If the audience empathizes with these characters, the move¬
ment from the negative to the positive will create a positive emo¬
tion. But which? There are many.

Suppose the writer calls for a summer’s day, brightly colored
flowers in window boxes, blossoms on the trees. The producer casts
Jim Carrey and Mira Sorvino. The director composes them in head-
to-foot shots. Together they’ve created a comic mood. Comedy likes
bright light and color. Comics need full shots because they act with
their whole bodies. Carrey and Sorvino are brilliant zanies. The
audience will feel tingling fear spiced with laughter as Carrey bangs
through the door, as Sorvino pulls a gun, as these two try to make
love. Then a burst of joy when she takes him back.

But suppose the scene were set in the dead of night, the house
spackled with shadows of trees blowing in the wind, moonlight,
street light. The director shoots tight, canted angles and orders the
lab to mute the colors. The producer casts Michael Madsen and
Linda Fiorentino. Without changing a beat, the scene is now
drenched in a Thriller mood. Our hearts will be in our throats as we
fear that one of these two isn’t getting out of this alive. Imagine
Madsen bulling his way in, Fiorentino grabbing a gun, those two
fighting for it. When they’re finally in each other’s arms, we’ll
breathe a sigh of relief.

The arc of the scene, sequence, or act determines the basic
emotion. Mood makes it specific. But mood will not substitute for
emotion. When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or
museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go
to the storyteller. It does the writer no good to write an exposition-
filled scene in which nothing changes, then set it in a garden at

248 4 ROBERT MCKEE

sundown, thinking that a golden mood will carry the day. All the
writer has done is dump weak writing on the shoulders of the
director and cast. Undramatized exposition is boring in any light.
Film is not about decorative photography.

THE NATURE OF CHOICE

A Turning Point is centered in the choice a character makes under
pressure to take one action or another in the pursuit of desire.
Human nature dictates that each of us will always choose the “good”
or the “right” as we perceive the “good” or the “right” It is impossible
to do otherwise. Therefore, if a character is put into a situation
where he must choose between a clear good versus a clear evil, or
right versus wrong, the audience, understanding the character's
point of view, will know in advance how the character will choose.

The choice between good and evil or between right

and wrong is no choice at all.

Imagine Attila, King of the Huns poised on the borders of fifth-
century Europe, surveying his hordes and asking himself: “Should
I invade, murder, rape, plunder, burn, and lay waste ... or should I
go home?” For Attila this is no choice at all. He must invade, slay,
plunder, and lay waste. He didn’t lead tens of thousands of war¬
riors across two continents to turn around when he finally came
within sight of the prize. In the eyes of his victims, however, his is
an evil decision. But that’s their point of view. For Attila his choice
is not only the right thing to do, but probably the moral thing to do.
No doubt, like many of history’s great tyrants, he felt he was on a
holy mission.

Or, closer to home: A thief bludgeons a victim on the street for
the five dollars in her purse. He may know this isn’t the moral thing
to do, but moral/immoral, right/wrong, legal/illegal often have little
to do with one another. He may instantly regret what he's done. But
at the moment of murder, front the thiefs point of view, his arm won’t
move until he’s convinced himself that this is the right choice.

SCENE DESIGN + 249

If we do not understand that much about human nature—that
a human being is only capable of acting toward the right or the
good as he has come to believe it or rationalize it—then we under¬
stand very little. Good/evil, right/wrong choices are dramatically
obvious and trivial.

True choice is dilemma. It occurs in two situations. First, a choice
between irreconcilable goods: From the character’s view two things
are desirable, he wants both, but circumstances are forcing him to
choose only one. Second, a choice between the lesser of two evils : From
the character’s view two things are undesirable, he wants neither,
but circumstances are forcing him to choose one. How a character
chooses in a true dilemma is a powerful expression of his
humanity and of the world in which he lives.

Writers since Homer have understood the principle of
dilemma, and realized that the story of a two-sided relationship
cannot be sustained, that the simple conflict between Character A
and Character B cannot be told to satisfaction.

Positive / Neutral / Negative

(A)-► --(B)

+ /-

A two-sided conflict is not dilemma but vacillation between the
positive and the negative. “She loves me/she loves me not, she
loves me/she loves not,” for example, swings back and forth
between good and bad, and presents insoluble story problems. It
isn’t only tediously repetitious, but it has no ending.

If we try to climax this pattern on the positive with the protago¬
nist believing “She loves me,” the audience leaves thinking, “Wait
till tomorrow when she’ll love you not again.” Or if on the negative
“She loves me not,” the audience exits thinking, "She’ll come back.
She always did.” Even if we kill the loved one, it’s not a true ending
because the protagonist is left wondering, “She loved me? She
loved me not?” and the audience exits groping for a point that was
never made.

250 4 ROBERT MCKEE

For example, here are two stories: one that wavers back and
forth between inward states of pleasure and pain and one of inner
dilemma. Compare BETTY BLUE with THE RED DESERT. In the
former, Betty (Beatrice Dalle) slides from obsession to madness to
catatonia. She has impulses but never makes a true decision. In the
later Giuliana (Monica Vitti) faces profound dilemmas: retreat into
comforting fantasies versus making meaning out of a harsh reality,
madness versus pain. BETTY BLUE’S “mock-minimalism" is an
over two-hour long snapshot of a helpless victim of schizophrenia
that mistakes suffering for drama. ILDESERTOROSSOisa mini¬
malist masterpiece that delineates a human being grappling with
the terrifying contradictions within her nature.

To construct and create genuine choice, we must frame a three-
sided situation. As in life, meaningful decisions are triangular.

+ /-

+ /-

The moment we add C we generate ample material to avoid rep¬
etition. First, to the three possible relationships between A and B:
positive/negative/neutral, love/hate/indifference, for example, we
add the same three between A and C and between B and C. This
gives us nine possibilities. Then we may join A and B against C; A

SCENE DESIGN + 251

and C against B; B and C against A. Or put them all in love or all in
hate or all indifferent. By adding a third comer, the triangle breeds
over twenty variations, more than enough material to progress
without repetition. A fourth element would produce compound
interlocking triangles, a virtual infinitude of changing relationships.

What’s more, triangular design brings closure. If a telling is
two-sided so that A vacillates between B and no-B, the ending is
open. But if choice is three-sided so that A is caught between B and
C, A’s choice of one or the other closes the ending with satisfac¬
tion. Whether B and C represent the lesser of two evils or irrecon¬
cilable goods, the protagonist can’t have both. A price must be paid.
One must be risked or lost to gain the other. If, for example, A
relinquishes C to have B, the audience feels a true choice has been
taken. C has been sacrificed, and this irreversible change ends the
story.

The most compelling dilemmas often combine the choice of
irreconcilable goods with the lesser of two evils. In the Supernatural
Romance DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS, for example,
Dona (Sonia Braga) faces a choice between a new husband who’s
warm, secure, faithful, but dull versus an ex-husband who’s sexy,
exciting, but dead, yet his ghost appears to her in private as flesh
and blood and sexually insatiable as ever. Is she hallucinating or
not? What's the widow to do? She’s caught in the dilemma between
a boringly pleasant life of normality versus a bizarre, perhaps mad,
life of emotional fulfillment. She makes the wise decision: She
takes both.

An original work poses choices between unique but irreconcil¬
able desires: It may be between two persons, a person and a
lifestyle, two lifestyles, two ideals, two aspects of the innermost
self—between any conflicting desires at any level of conflict, real or
imagined, the writer may devise. But the principle is universal:
Choice must not be doubt but dilemma, not between right/wrong
or good/evil, but between either positive desires or negative desires
of equal weight and value.

, ^ u ,,

SCENE ANALYSIS

TEXT AND SUBTEXT

Just as a personality structure can be disclosed through psycho¬
analysis, the shape of a scene’s inner life can be uncovered through
a similar inquiry. If we ask the right questions, a scene that speeds
past in the reading and hides its flaws brakes into ultra-slow
motion, opens up, and reveals its secrets.

If you feel a scene plays, don’t fix what works. But often a first
draft falls flat or seems forced. Our tendency then is to rewrite dia¬
logue over and over, hoping that by paraphrasing speeches we can
bring it to life . . . until we hit a dead end. For the problem won’t
be in the scene’s activity but in its action; not in how characters
are talking or behaving on the surface, but in what they’re doing
behind their masks. Beats build scenes, and the flaws of an ill-
designed scene are in these exchanges of behavior. To find out
why a scene fails, the whole must be broken into its parts. An
analysis begins, therefore, by separating the scene’s text from its
subtext.

Text means the sensory surface of a work of art. In film it's the
images onscreen and the soundtrack of dialogue, music, and sound
effects. What we see. What we hear. What people say. What people
do. Subtext is the life under that surface—thoughts and feelings
both known and unknown, hidden by behavior.

Nothing is what it seems. This principle calls for the screen¬
writer’s constant awareness of the duplicity of life, his recognition

252

SCENE ANALYSIS + 253

that everything exists on at least two levels, and that, therefore, he
must write a simultaneous duality: First, he must create a verbal
description of the sensory surface of life, sight and sound, activity
and talk. Second, he must create the inner world of conscious and
unconscious desire, action and reaction, impulse and id, genetic
and experiential imperatives. As in reality, so in fiction: He must
veil the truth with a living mask, the actual thoughts and feelings of
characters behind their saying and doing.

An old Hollywood expression goes: “If the scene is about what
the scene is about, you're in deep shit.” It means writing “on the
nose,” writing dialogue and activity in which a character’s deepest
thoughts and feelings are expressed by what the character says and
does—writing the subtext directly into the text.

Writing this, for example: Two attractive people sit opposite
each other at a candlelit table, the light glinting off the crystal wine¬
glasses and the dewy eyes of the lovers. Soft breezes billow the cur¬
tains. A Chopin nocturne plays in the background. The lovers reach
across the table, touch hands, look longingly in each others' eyes,
say, “I love you, I love you" . . . and actually mean it. This is an
unactable scene arid will die like a rat in the road.

Actors are not marionettes to mime gestures and mouth words.
They’re artists who create with material from the subtext, not the
text. An actor brings a character to life from the inside out, from
unspoken, even unconscious thoughts and feelings out to a surface
of behavior. The actors will say and do whatever the scene requires,
but they find their sources for creation in the inner life. The scene
above is unactable because it has no inner life, no subtext. It’s
unactable because there’s nothing to act.

When we reflect on our filmgoing, we realize we’ve witnessed
the phenomenon of subtext all our lives. The screen isn’t opaque
but transparent. When we look up at the screen, don’t we have the
impression that we’re reading minds and feelings? We constantly
say to ourselves, “I know what that character’s really thinking and
feeling. I know what’s going on inside her better than she does,
and I know it better than the guy she’s talking to because he’s busy
with his own agenda.”

254 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

In life our eyes tend to stop at the surface. We’re so consumed
by our own needs, conflicts, and daydreams that we rarely manage
to take a step back and coolly observe what’s going on inside other
human beings. Occasionally we put a frame around a couple in the
corner of a coffee shop and create a movie moment as we look
through their smiles to the boredom beneath or through the pain
in their eyes to the hope they have for each other. But rarely and
only for a moment. In the ritual of story, however, we continuously
see through the faces and activities of characters to depths of the
unspoken, the unaware.

This is why we go to the storyteller, the guide who takes us
beyond what seems to what is . . . at all levels and not for a mere
moment but to the end of the line. The storyteller gives us the plea¬
sure that life denies, the pleasure of sitting in the dark ritual of
story, looking through the face of life to the heart of what is felt and
thought beneath what’s said and done.

How then might we write a love scene? Let two people change
the tire on a car. Let the scene be a virtual textbook on how to fix a
flat. Let all dialogue and action be about jack, wrench, hubcap, and
lug nuts: “Hand me that, would ya?” “Watch out.” “Don’t get dirty.”
“Let me . . . whoops.” The actors will interpret the real action of the
scene, so leave room for them to bring romance to life wholly from
the inside. As their eyes meet and sparks fly, we’ll know what’s hap¬
pening because it’s in the unspoken thoughts and emotions of the
actors. As we see through the surface, we’ll lean back with a knowing
smile: “Look what happened. They’re not just changing the tire on a
car. He thinks she’s hot and she knows it. Boy has met girl.”

In other words, write as these things happen in life. For if we
give that candlelit scene to fine actors, they’ll smell the lie, refuse to
act it, and walk off until the scene is cut or rewritten with an
actable subtext. If the cast lacks the clout to demand a rewrite, then
they’ll do this: They will put a subtext in the scene whether or not it
has anything to do with the story. Good actors will not step in front
of a camera without their subtext.

For example, an actor forced to do the candlelit scene might
attack it like this: “Why have these people gone out of their way to

SCENE ANALYSIS + 255

create this movie scene? What’s with the candlelight, soft music,
billowing curtains? Why don’t they just take their pasta to the TV
set like normal people? What's wrong with this relationship?”
Because isn’t that life? When do the candles come out? When
everything’s fine? No. When everything’s fine we take our pasta to
the TV set like normal people. So from that insight the actor will
create a subtext. Now as we watch, we think: “He says he loves her
and maybe he does, but look, he’s scared he’s losing her. He’s des¬
perate.” Or from another subtext: “He says he loves her, but look,
he’s setting her up for bad news. He’s getting ready to walk out.”

The scene is not about what the scene seems to be about. It’s
about something else. And it’s that something else—trying to
regain her affection or softening her up for the breakup—that will
make the scene work. There’s always a subtext, an inner life that
contrasts with or contradicts the text. Given this, the actor will
create a multilayered work that allows us to see through the text to
the truth that vibrates behind the eyes, voice, and gestures of life.

This principle does not mean that people are insincere. It’s a com-
monsense recognition that we all wear a public mask. We say and do
what we feel we should, while we think and feel something else alto¬
gether. As we must. We realize we can’t go around saying and doing
what we’re actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would
be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that’s how you know you're talking to a
lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner com¬
munication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what
they are thinking and feeling and that’s why they're mad.

In truth, it’s virtually impossible for anyone, even the insane, to
fully express what’s going on inside. No matter how much we wish
to manifest our deepest feelings, they elude us. We never fully
express the truth, for in fact we rarely know it. Consider the situa¬
tion in which we are desperate to express our truest thoughts and
feelings—psychoanalysis: A patient lies on a couch, pouring his
heart out. Wanting to be understood. No holds barred. No intimacy
too private to reveal. And as he rips terrible thoughts and desires to
the surface, what does the analyst do? Quietly nods and takes
notes. And what’s in those notes? What is not being said, the secret,

256 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

unconscious truths that lie behind the patient’s gut-wrenching con¬
fession. Nothing is what is seems. No text without a subtext.

Nor does this mean that we can’t write powerful dialogue in
which desperate people try to tell the truth. It simply means that
the most passionate moments must conceal an even deeper level.

CHINATOWN: Evelyn Mulwray cries out: “She’s my sister and
my daughter. My father and I . . But what she doesn’t say is:
“Please help me.” Her anguished confession is in fact a plea for
help. Subtext: “I didn’t kill my husband; my father did . . . to pos¬
sess my child. If you arrest me, he’ll take her. Please help me.” In
the next beat Gittes says, “Well have to get you out of town.” An
illogical reply that makes perfect sense. Subtext: “I’ve understood
everything you’ve told me. I now know your father did it. I love you
and I’m going to risk my life to save you and your child. Then I’m
going after the bastard.” All this is underneath the scene, giving us
truthful behavior without phony “on the nose” dialogue, and what’s
more, without robbing the audience of the pleasure of insight.

STAR WARS: When Darth Vader offers Luke the chance to join
him in running the universe, bringing “order to things,” Luke’s reac¬
tion is to attempt suicide. Again not a logical reaction, but one that
makes perfect sense, for both Luke and the audience read Darth
Vader’s subtext: Behind “bring order to things” is the unspoken impli¬
cation “... and enslave billions.” When Luke attempts to kill himself,
we read a heroic subtext: “I’ll die before I’d join your evil enterprise.”

Characters may say and do anything you can imagine. But
because it’s impossible for any human being to tell or act the com¬
plete truth, because at the very least there’s always an unconscious
dimension, the writer must layer in a subtext. And when the audi¬
ence senses that subtext, the scene plays.

This principle also extends to the first-person novel, theatrical
soliloquy, and direct-to-camera or voice-over narration. For if char¬
acters talk privately to us, that doesn’t mean for a moment that they
know the truth or are capable of telling it.

ANNIE HALL: When Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) speaks
directly to the audience “confessing” his fears and inadequacies, he
also lies, dissembles, cajoles, exaggerates, and rationalizes, all in a

SCENE ANALYSIS « 257

self-deceived effort to win us over and convince himself his heart’s
in the right place.

Subtext is present even when a character is alone. For if no one
else is watching us, we are. We wear masks to hide our true selves
from ourselves.

Not only do individuals wear masks, but institutions do as well
and hire public relations experts to keep them in place. Paddy
Chayefsky’s satire HOSPITAL cuts to the core of that truth. Hos¬
pital staffs all wear white and act as if professional, caring, and sci¬
entific. But if you’ve ever worked inside a medical institution, you
know that greed and ego and a touch of madness are invisibly
there. If you want to die, go to a hospital.

The constant duality of life is true even for the inanimate. In
Robert Rossen’s adaptation of Melville’s BILLY BUDD a man-o-war
rests in tropical waters at night. Uncountable stars gleam above, all
magnificently reflected in a black, calm sea. A low, full moon trails
its light from the horizon to the ship’s prow. The limp sails tremble
in the warm breezes. The cruel master-at-arms, Claggart (Robert
Ryan) is holding watch. Billy (Terence Stamp) can’t sleep, so he
comes out on deck, stands at the gunnels with Claggart, and
remarks on what a beautiful evening it is. Claggart answers, “Yes,
Billy, yes, but remember, beneath that glittering surface is a uni¬
verse of gliding monsters.” Even Mother Nature wears her masks.

THE TECHNIQUE OF SCENE ANALYSIS

To analyze a scene you must slice into its pattern of behaviors at
the levels of both text and subtext. Once properly examined, its
flaws become vividly clear. Below is a five-step process designed to
make a scene give up its secrets.

Step One: Define Conflict

First ask, who drives the scene, motivates it, and makes it happen?
Any character or force might drive a scene, even an inanimate object
or act of nature. Then look into both the text and subtext of this char-

258 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

acter or force, and ask: What does he (or it) want? Desire is always
the key. Phrase this desire (or in the actor's idiom: scene objective) as
an infinitive: such as, “to do this . . .” or “to get that...”

Next, look across the scene and ask: What forces of antagonism
block this desire? Again, these forces may come from any level or com¬
bination. After identifying the source of antagonism, ask: What do the
forces of antagonism want? This too is best expressed as an infinitive:
“Not to do that. ..” or “To get this instead . . .” If the scene is well
written, when you compare the set of phrases expressing the desires
from each side, you'll see that they’re in direct conflict—not tangential.

Step Two: Note Opening Value

Identify the value at stake in the scene and note its charge, positive
or negative, at the opening of the scene. Such as: “Freedom. The
protagonist is at the negative, a prisoner of his own obsessive ambi¬
tion.” Or: “Faith. The protagonist is at the positive, he trusts in God
to get him out of this situation.”

Step Three: Break the Scene into Beats

A beat is an exchange of action/reaction in character behavior. Look
carefully at the scene's first action on two levels: outwardly, in terms
of what the character seems to be doing, and, more important, look
beneath the surface to what he is actually doing. Name this sub-
textural action with an active gerund phrase, such as “Begging." Try
to find phrases that not only indicate action but touch the feelings of
the character. “Pleading” for example, suggests a character acting
with a sense of formality, whereas “Groveling at her feet” conveys a
desperate servility.

The phrases that express the action in the subtext do not
describe character activity in literal terms; they go deeper to name
the character’s essential action with emotive connotations.

Now look across the scene to see what reaction that action
brought, and describe that reaction with an active gerund phrase.
For example, “Ignoring the plea.”

SCENE ANALYSIS + 259

This exchange of action and reaction is a beat. As long as it con¬
tinues, Character A is “Groveling at her feet” but Character B is
“Ignoring the plea,” it’s one beat. Even if their exchange repeats a
number of times, it's still one and the same beat. A new beat
doesn’t occur until behavior clearly changes.

If, for example, Character A's groveling changed to “Threat¬
ening to leave her” and in reaction Character B’s ignoring changed
to “Laughing at the threat,” then the scene’s second beat is “Threat¬
ening/Laughing” until A and B’s behavior changes for a third time.
The analysis then continues through the scene, parsing it into its
beats.

Step Four: Note Closing Value and Compare with
Opening Value

At the end of the scene, examine the value-charged condition of the
character’s situation and describe it in positive/negative terms.
Compare this note to the one made in Step Two. If the two nota¬
tions are the same, the activity between them is a nonevent. Nothing
has changed, therefore nothing has happened. Exposition may have
been passed to the audience, but the scene is flat. If, on the other
hand, the value has undergone change, then the scene has turned.

Step Five: Survey Beats and Locate Turning Point

Start from the opening beat and review the gerund phrases
describing the actions of the characters. As you trace action/reac¬
tion to the end of the scene, a shape or pattern should emerge. In a
well-designed scene, even behaviors that seem helter-skelter will
have an arc and a purpose. In fact, in such scenes, it’s their careful
design that makes the beats feel random. Within the arc locate the
moment when the major gap opens between expectation and
result, turning the scene to its changed end values. This precise
moment is the Turning Point.

An analysis of the design of the following two scenes illustrates
this technique.

z6o 4 ROBERT MCKEE

CASABLANCA

Casablanca's Mid-Act Climax is played within a unity of time and
place that puts emphasis on personal conflict and expresses its pri¬
mary action verbally.

SYNOPSIS

Rick Blaine, an antifascist freedom fighter, and lisa Lund, a Norwe¬
gian expatriate, meet in Paris in 1940. They fall in love and begin
an affair. He asks her to marry him, but she avoids an answer. Rick
is on the Gestapo arrest list. On the eve of the Nazi invasion the
lovers agree to meet at the train station and escape the city
together. But lisa doesn’t show. Instead, she sends a note saying
she loves Rick but will never see him again.

A year later, Rick runs a cafe in Casablanca. He's become an
isolate, determinedly neutral, uninvolved in all matters personal
and political. As he says, “I stick my neck out for no man.” He
drinks too much and feels as if he has killed his former self. Then
lisa walks in on the arm of Victor Laszlo, a renowned resistance
leader. The lovers meet again. Behind their cocktail chat their pas¬
sion is palpable. Ilsa leaves with Laszlo, but Rick sits in the dark
cafe drinking through the night, waiting.

Hours after midnight she reappears. By now Rick is very
maudlin and equally drunk. Ilsa tells him guardedly that she
admires but doesn't love Laszlo. Then, before she can tell him that
she loves him, Rick, in drunken bitterness, belittles her story by
comparing it to one told in a brothel. Staring at her with a twisted
smile he adds insult to injury: “Tell me. Who’d you leave me for?
Was it Laszlo? Or were there others in between? Or aren’t you the
kind that tells?” This slur, implying she’s a whore, sends her out
the door as he collapses in drunken tears.

SCENE ANALYSIS « 261

THE MID-ACT CLIMAX

The next day lisa and Laszlo go in search of black market exit visas.
While he tries to make a deal in a cafe, she waits at a linen stall on
the street. Seeing her alone, Rick approaches.

Step One: Define Conflict

Rick initiates and drives the scene. Despite inner conflict over the
pain he has suffered since she abandoned him in Paris, and the
anger he suppresses at seeing her with another man, Rick's desire
is clear: “To win lisa back.” His source of antagonism is equally
clear: lisa. Her feelings are very complex and clouded by mixed
emotions of guilt, regret, and duty. She loves Rick passionately and
would go back to him if she could; but for reasons only she knows,
she can't. Caught between irreconcilable needs, lisa's desire can be
phrased as “To keep her affair with Rick in the past and move on
with her life.” Although entangled with inner conflicts, their
desires are in direct opposition.

Step Two: Note Opening Value

Love governs the scene. Rick’s insulting behavior in their last scene
turned the value toward the negative, yet it leans to the positive
because the audience and Rick see a ray of hope. In previous
scenes lisa has been addressed as “Miss lisa Lund,” a single
woman traveling with Laszlo. Rick wants to change that.

Step Three: Break the Scene into Beats
BEAT * 1

EXT. BAZAAR—LINEN STALL

The sign over the Arab Vendor’s stall reads Lingerie. He shows
lisa a lace bed sheet.

262 4 ROBERT MCKEE

Vendor’s action: SELLING.

ARAB

You’ll not find a treasure
like this in all Morocco,

Mademoiselle.

Just then, Rick walks up behind her.

Rick’s action: APPROACHING HER.

Without looking lisa senses his prescence. She feigns interest
in the lace.

lisa’s reaction: IGNORING HIM.

The Vendor holds up a sign reading 700 francs.

ARAB

Only seven hundred francs.

BEAT *2

RICK

You’re being cheated.

Rick’s action: PROTECTING HER.

Ilsa takes a second to compose herself. She glances at Rick,
then with polite formality turns to the Vendor.

ILSA

It doesn’t matter, thank you.

lisa’s reaction: REJECTING RICK’S ADVANCE.

SCENE ANALYSIS + 263

To win lisa away from Lazio, Rick's first task is to break
the ice—no easy task given the recriminations and angry
emotions of their last scene. His warning seems to insult
the Arab Vendor, who takes no offense, but in the subtext
it hints at more: her relationship with Lazio.

BEAT *3

ARAB

Ah . . . the lady is a friend of
Rick’s? For friends of Rick we
have a small discount. Seven
hundred francs, did I say?

(holding up a new
sign)

You can have it for two hun¬
dred.

RICK

I’m sorry I was in no condi¬
tion to receive visitors when
you called on me last night.

Rick’s action: APOLOGIZING.

ILSA

It doesn’t matter.

lisa’s reaction: REJECTING HIM AGAIN.

ARAB

Ah! For special friends of
Rick’s we have a special
discount.

He replaces the second sign with a third, reading 100 francs.

264 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

Rick’s protective action of the first beat comes naturally;
the apology in the second beat is more difficult and rare.
He masks his embarassment by using an excessive for¬
mality to make hght of it. Ilsa is unmoved.

BEAT *4

RICK

Your story left me a little
confused. Or maybe it was
the bourbon.

Rick’s action: EXCUSE MAKING.

ARAB

I have some tablecloths, some
napkins . . .

ILSA

Thank you, I’m really not
interested.

Ilsa’s reaction: REJECTING RICK FOR THE FOURTH
TIME.

ARAB

(exiting hurriedly)

Only one moment . . .please . . .

The Arab vendor enriches the scene in a number of ways.
He opens it in a comic tone to counterpoint a dark ending; he
sells lace which adds connotations of weddings and the sexu¬
ality of lingerie; most importantly, however, he tries to sell
Rick to Ilsa. The vendor’s first line declares Rick a treasure.
To demonstrate the power of Rick, the vendor drops his

SCENE ANALYSIS * 265

price for “friends of Rick’s. ” Then, hearing something about
last night, the vendor cuts it even more for “special friends
of Rick’s. ”

This is followed by Rick’s second reference to his drinking,
as he tries to make this take the blame for his insulting
behavior. Ilsa will hear none of it, and yet she stands and
waits and it’s safe to assume she isn’t waiting to buy lace.

BEAT *5

A small silence as she pretends to examine the lace goods.

RICK

Why’d you come hack? To
tell me why you ran out on
me at the railway station?

Rick’s action: GETTING HIS FOOT IN THE DOOR.

ILSA

(quietly)

Yes.

lisa’s reaction: OPENING THE DOOR A CRACK.

After hearing no four times in a row, Rick wants her to
say yes to anything. So he asks a question that supplies
its own answer. Her quiet yes opens the door—keeping the
chain on, perhaps, but indicating she’s willing to talk.

BEAT *6

RICK

Well, you can tell me now. I’m
reasonably sober.

266 4 ROBERT MCKEE

Rick’s action: GETTING DOWN ON HIS KNEES.

ILSA

I don’t think I will, Rick.

lisa’s reaction: ASKING FOR MORE.

The taciturn Rick insults himself over his drinking for the
third time. In his tough guy manner, this is begging, and it
works. Ilsa demurs, opposing him in a mild, polite way,
yet continuing her lace-buying guise. To paraphrase her
subtext: “That begging was nice for a change. Could I hear
a httle more, please?”

BEAT *7

RICK

Why not? After all, I was
stuck with the railroad ticket.
I think I’m entitled to know.

Rick’s action: GUILT-TRIPPING HER.

ILSA

Last night I saw what has
happened to you. The Rick I
knew in Paris, I could tell
him. He‘d understand—but
the Rick who looked at me
with such hatred ; . .

lisa’s reaction: GUILT-TRIPPING HIM BACK.

These two people have a relationship. Each feels like the
injured party, and each knows the sensitivity of the other
so well that they hurt each other with ease.

SCENE ANALYSIS « 267

ILSA

(turning to look at
Rick)

I’U be leaving Casablanca
soon. We’ll never see each
other again. We knew very-
little about each other when
we were in love in Paris. If we
leave it that way, maybe we’ll
remember those days—not
Casablanca—not last night—

lisa’s action: SAYING GOODBYE.

Rick simply stares at her.

Rick’s reaction: REFUSING TO REACT.

In the subtext, lisa's kind, forgiving prose is a clear goodbye.
No matter how well-mannered, no matter how much her lan¬
guage implies her love for Rick, this is the kiss-off: u Let’s be
friends, let's remember the good times, and forget the bad."

Rick will have none of this. He reacts by refusing to react;
for ignoring someone's action is, of course, a reaction.
Instead he starts the next beat.

BEAT *8

BEAT *9

RICK

(voice low and
intense)

Did you run out on me
because you couldn’t take it?

268 + ROBERT MCKEE

Because you knew what it
would be like, hiding from the
police, running away all the
time?

Rick’s action: CALLING HER A COWARD.

ILSA

You can believe that if you
want to.

lisa’s reaction: CALLING HIM A FOOL.

Rick’s had a year to figure out why she left him, and his
best guess is that she was a coward. She, however, dares
death with Laszlo every day, and so she insults him in
return with a cool sarcasm that implies: “I don ( t care what
you think; fools beheve such nonsense; if you want to join
them, beheve it too. ”

BEAT *10

RICK

Well, I’m not running away
anymore. I’m settled now—
above a saloon, it’s true—but
walk up a flight. I’ll be
expecting you.

Rick’s action: SEXUALLY PROPOSITIONING HER.

Ilsa drops her eyes and turns away from Rick, her face
shaded by the wide brim of her hat.

Ilsa’s reaction: HIDING HER REACTION.

SCENE ANALYSIS + 269

Despite her denials, he senses that her feelings lean the
other way. He well remembers their sex life in Paris, and
has seen the cold, aloof Laszlo. So he takes a chance and
propositions her on the street. Again, it works. Ilsa too
remembers, and hides her blush under her hat brim. For a
moment Rick feels she’s within reach, but he can’t resist
sticking his foot in his mouth.

BEAT * 1 1

RICK

All the same, some day you’ll
lie to Laszlo—you’ll be there.

Rick’s action: CALLING HER A WHORE.

ILSA

No, Rick. You see, Victor
Laszlo is my husband.

And was . . .

(pause, coolly)

. . . even when I knew you in
Paris.

lisa’s reaction: CRUSHING HIM WITH THE NEWS.

With dignity and poise, Ilsa walks away, leaving the stunned
Rick to stare after her.

Rick can’t contain the pain caused by lisa’s abandonment
As in the climax of their previous scene, he strikes out with
a sexual slur, implying that she’ll betray Laszlo to come
back to his bed. Called a slut for a second time, Ilsa reaches
back for the hardest thing she has, and strikes Rick with it
as hard as she can. Notice, however, that this is a half-
truth; she doesn’t add that she thought her husband was

270 4 ROBERT MCKEE

dead. Instead, she leaves a terrible implication in her wake:
She was a married woman who used Rick in Paris, then
walked out on him when her husband came back. There¬
fore, her love was never real. We know from the subtext
that the opposite is the truth, but Rick is devastated.

Step Four: Note Closing Value and Compare
with Opening Value

The Central Plot turns sharply from a hopeful positive to a negative
at a darker depth than Rick could have imagined. For not only does
lisa make it clear she doesn’t love him now; she implies she never
did. Her secret marriage turns their Paris romance into a sham and
Rick into a cuckold.

Step Five: Survey the Beats and Locate the Turning
Point

1. Approaching Her/Ignoring Him

2. Protecting Her/Rejecting Him (and Arab)

3. Apologizing/Rejecting Him

4. Excuse Making/Rejecting Him (and Arab)

5. Getting His Foot in the Door/Opening the Door

6. Getting Down on His Knees/Asking for More

7. Guilt-Tripping Her/Guilt-Tripping Him

8. Saying Goodbye/Refusing to React

9. Calling Her a Coward/Calling Him a Fool

10. Sexually Propositioning Her/Hiding Her Reaction

11. Calling Her a Slut/Destroying His Hope

The action/reaction pattern builds a rapid progression of beats.
Each exchange tops the previous beat, placing their love in greater
and greater risk, demanding more and more willpower and
capacity to take painful, even cruel actions, but at the same time
remain in cool control.

The gap opens in the middle of the eleventh beat, on the revela-

SCENE ANALYSIS « 271

tion that lisa was married to Laszlo while having an affair with
Rick. Until this moment, Rick has hopes of winning her over, but
with this Turning Point his hope is shattered.

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

In contrast to the stationary dialogue duet in CASABLANCA, the
Climax of the Karin/God plot in THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
shifts from place to place with slight ellipses of time, involves four
characters, anchors itself at the level of inner conflict, and conveys
its primary action physically.

SYNOPSIS

For this film Bergman designed a Multiplot of six interconnected
stories. The most powerful is the conflict between Karin and her
“God.” She suffers from delusional schizophrenia. During a period
of lucidity, she's released from a hospital to join her family for a
brief holiday at their cottage on an island in the Baltic. While she
struggles to hold on to her sanity, she's surrounded by weak, trou¬
bled men who turn to her for support.

David, Karin's father, is outwardly kind but emotionally
repressed. He’s a popular novelist but hounded by his lack of crit¬
ical recognition. He prefers to observe life at a safe distance before
cannibalizing it for his art. Karin wants her father to be happy and
prays for his artistic success.

Karin’s husband, Martin, is an MD. She craves his under¬
standing and approval; instead, he patronizes her like one of his
patients and pesters her for sex.

Karin’s brother, Minus, is her only true intimate. She confides
in him, telling him the secrets of her terrifying delusions, but he's
so troubled with adolescent sexuality and estrangement from his
father that he gives her little consolation. Instead, Karin, sensing
his fears, offers Minus comfort.

272 « ROBERT MCKEE

Soon Karin's acute sensitivity (perhaps even psychic awareness)
gives way to hallucination. She hears voices from behind an attic
wall, telling her that God will appear. Scared, she turns to Martin,
but he humiliates her over the lack of sex in their marriage. When
she seeks out her father, he gently dismisses her like a child.
Alone, Karin sneaks a look at her father’s diary and discovers that
his only interest in her is as a character study for his next novel.
She tries to tell her brother about the coming miracle of God’s visi¬
tation, but Minus is so confused and tormented by his cravings that
he doesn’t understand. Suddenly, Karin’s madness takes a sexual
turn. With feral intensity, she drags her brother down into incest.

When David discovers what has happened, he’s moved more by
self-pity than by concern for his children. Amazingly, Karin sympa¬
thizes with him, and knowing that he’s only interested in her as
story material, gives her father insights into her illness. Martin
interrupts, declaring that he must take Karin back to the mental
hospital. He calls for an ambulance and starts to pack.

Step One: Define Conflict

Karin drives the scene. She believes in her voices and desperately
hopes to see God, not only for her own needs but for her men. She
wants to give them her epiphany, perhaps to win acceptance, but
more importantly to help their troubled lives. Her sources of antago¬
nism are two: first, her husband. Martin is drawn to her sexually and
pities her, but he can no longer cope with her madness, so he wants
to take her away from her “God” and put her safely back in the hos¬
pital. The second, and more powerful, is herself. While she hopes to
have a glimpse of heaven, her subconscious waits to give her a vision
of hell.

Step Two: Note Opening Value

Hope, in a strange way, fills the opening of the scene. Karin is the
most empathetic character in the film. We want her desire to see
God to be fulfilled. Even if it’s a mad fantasy, it would give joy to a

SCENE ANALYSIS 4 273

tormented woman. Furthermore, her many psychic experiences
earlier in the film have led us to suspect that she may not be hallu¬
cinating. We hold out hope for a supernatural event; Karin's tri¬
umph over the self-centered men around her.

Step Three: Break the Scene into Beats
BEAT * 1

INT. COTTAGE BEDROOM—DAY

Karin and Martin pack for the ambulance. Martin rummages
through a chest of drawers, searching for a shirt. Karin's thoughts
seem far away as she struggles with an overstuffed suitcase.

KARIM

Your shirts are washed hut
not ironed.

Karin’s action: PLANNING HER ESCAPE.

MARTIN
I’ve got shirts in town
anyway.

Martin’s reaction: CONCEALING HIS GUILT.

KARIN

Help me shut the case, please.

Martin wrestles with the lid, but a pair of shoes keeps the
latch from catching. He takes them out and looks at them.

MARTIN

It’s my shoes. I can leave
them here.

274 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

KARIN

Why not wear these and leave
those?

MARTIN

(indicating the pair
he is wearing)

These have to he mended.

He drops the shoes on the floor and hurriedly puts on his
jacket. Karin slowly closes the suitcase lid.

This beat is almost comic. Karin’s dressed and packed, but
Martin, like a boy needing a mother, fumbles around.
She’s a psychiatric patient returning to electric shock
treatments, yet remains practical and composed; he’s a
doctor flustered over which shoes to wear. On the text
Karin seems to be packing, but in the subtext she’s plan¬
ning her next move. He’s so distracted by his guilty con¬
science, he doesn’t see that her outward calm conceals a
mind scheming to pursue her u miracle” in the attic.

BEAT *2

Karin fingers the suitcase, quietly and thoughtfully. Then:

KARIN

Have you a headache pill?

Karin’s action: ESCAPING TO HER “GOD.”

MARTIN

(looking around the
room)

Where’s the brown case?

SCENE ANALYSIS 4 275

Martin’s reaction: HELPING HER.

KARIN

In the kitchen.

MARTIN

(remembering)

Yes, so it is.

Martin rushes into the

INT. KITCHEN—SAME

and finds his medical case on the table. He takes out some
pills, fills a glass with water, then pads through the

INT. MAIN HALL—SAME

back to the

INT. BEDROOM—SAME

As he enters, a quick glance tells him that Karin’s gone.
Martin puts down the water and pills and rushes back into
the

INT. MAIN HALL—SAME
looking for her.

Karin is more perceptive than Martin, but it's a measure
of his self-absorption that she gives him the slip so easily.
He knows schizophrenics can’t be left alone, but his guilt
over taking her back to the hospital has him doing every¬
thing possible to please her. His caring attitude isn’t about
her suffering but his.

276 4 ROBERT MCKEE

BEAT *3

He glances outside, then runs to
INT. DAVID’S BEDROOM—SAME
and opens the door, surprising David at the window.

MARTIN

Seen Karin?

Martin’s action: SEARCHING FOR KARIN.

DAVID

No.

David’s reaction: HELPING HIM SEARCH.

As Martin leaves in a panic, David follows out into the
INT. MAIN HALL—SAME

where he and Martin exchange uncertain glances.

BEAT *4

Then suddenly they hear Karin’s voice in WHISPERS . .
upstairs.

Karin’s action: PRAYING.

Martin prepares a sedative while David climbs the stairs.

David’s reaction: RUSHING TO HER.

Martin’s reaction: PREPARING TO RECAPTURE HER.

SCENE ANALYSIS 4 277

UPPER HALL

Karin’s WHISPERS grow louder.

KARIN

(repeating the
phrase)

Yes, I see, I see . . .

Karin's hallucination gives these men what they want. For
Martin, the chance to play doctor; for David, the chance to
observe his daughter’s illness at its most dramatic.

BEAT *5

David quietly steps to an unused

INT. ATTIC ROOM—SAME

and opens the door a few inches to peer inside.

DAVID’S POV

through the half-opened door of Karin standing in the middle
of the room, staring at a wall with a closed closet door. Her
voice is formal and prayerlike as she nearly chants the words.

KARIN

(talking to the wall)

Yes, I quite see.

Karin’s action: PREPARING FOR HER EPIPHANY.

ON DAVID

staring at his daughter, transfixed by the scene she’s creating.

278 4 ROBERT MCKEE

KARIN (OFFSCREEN)

I know it won’t be long now

David’s reaction: OBSERVING KARIN’S MADNESS.

Martin, carrying his medical bag, joins David at the door. He
glares at the sight of Karin talking to her imaginary listener.

KARIN (OS)

It’s good to know that. But
we’ve been happy to wait.

Martin’s reaction: FIGHTING HIS EMOTIONS.

Karin supplicates before the voices behind the cracked
wallpaper, but she's been well aware of the efforts to find
her and of the now watchful eyes of her father, the sup¬
pressed anger of her husband.

BEAT *6

Martin hurries into the room and over to Karin, who anx¬
iously twists the beads around her neck and stares fixedly,
reverently, at the wall and closet door.

Martin’s action: STOPPING HER HALLUCINATION.

KARIN
(to Martin)

Walk quietly! They say he’ll
be here very soon. We must
be ready.

Karin’s reaction: PROTECTING HER VISION.

SCENE ANALYSIS + 279

BEAT *7

MARTIN

Karin, we’re going to town.

Martin’s action: PULLING HER AWAY.

KARIN

I can’t leave now.

Karin’s reaction: STANDING HER GROUND.

BEAT *8

MARTIN
You’re wrong, Karin.

(looking at the
closed door)

Nothing is happening in there,
(taking her
shoulders)

No God will come through the
door.

Martin’s action: DENYING THE EXISTENCE OF HER GOD.

KARIN

He’ll come at any moment.

And I must be here.

Karin’s reaction: DEFENDING HER FAITH.

MARTIN

Karin, it’s not so.

28o « ROBERT MCKEE

BEAT *9

KARIN

Not so loud! If you can’t be
quiet, go.

Karin’s action: ORDERING MARTIN AWAY.

MARTIN
Come with me.

KARIN

Must you spoil it? Leave me
alone.

As David watches from the door, Karin pulls away from
Martin, who withdraws to a chair, sits down, and cleans his
glasses.

Martin’s reaction: RETREATING.

Karin is simply stronger than Martin. Unable to match her
powerful will , he gives up and withdraws.

BEAT * 1 0

Karin kneels to face the wall and clasps her hands in prayer.

KARIN

Martin, dearest, forgive me
for being so cross. But can’t
you kneel down beside me?

You look so funny sitting
there. I know you don’t
believe, but for my sake.

SCENE ANALYSIS « 281

Karin’s action: DRAWING MARTIN INTO HER RITUAL.

Tears well up in Martin’s eyes, as in helpless anguish, he
comes back to her and kneels.

Martin’s reaction: SURRENDERING TO HER.

All the while David watches from the doorway.

Karin wants everything to be perfect for the arrival of her
God, so she brings the unbeheving Martin into her strange
ritual.

BEAT *1 1

Martin takes Karin by the shoulders and buries himself in the
crook of her neck, rubbing his tearful face against her skin.

MARTIN

Karin, dearest, dearest,
dearest.

Martin’s action: CARESSING HER.

Karin is repulsed. She pries his hand off and yanks away.

Karin’s reaction: FIGHTING HIM OFF.

Helpless in the face of her madness, Martin instinctively
tries to seduce her out of her mania, but his caresses fail
miserably.

BEAT * 1 2

Karin folds her hands in front of her in prayer.

282 + ROBERT MCKEE

Karin’s action: PRAYING WITH ALL HER POWER.

Suddenly an ear-splitting HOAR fills the room. Karin’s eyes
shift along the wall to the closet.

“God’s” reaction: ANNOUNCING “GOD’S” ARRIVAL.

BEAT * 1 3

The closet door swings open, seemingly of its own accord.

“God’s” action: APPEARING TO KARIN.

Karin stands respectfully and smiles at something that seems
to he emerging from the empty closet.

Karin’s reaction: RECEIVING HER “GOD.”

Outside the window, an ambulance helicopter descends from
the sky.

In the background, David eyes the scene intently.

How and why does the door open by itself? Vibrations from
the hehcopter perhaps, but that's not a satisfactory expla¬
nation. By pure coincidence, just as Karin prays for a mir¬
acle, door and helicopter join forces to give it to her. Yet,
amazin gly, the action doesn't seem contrived. For
Bergman's created, in Jungian terms, an event of Syn-
chronicity: the fusion of meaningful coincidence around a
center of tremendous emotion. By allowing us to hear
Karin's voices, by showing us her acute sensitivity to
nature, and by dramatizing her burning need for a miracle,
we come to expect the supernatural. Karin’s rehgious pas¬
sion is at such a fever pitch that it creates a synchronous
event that gives us a glimpse of something beyond the real.

SCENE ANALYSIS « 283

BEAT * 1 4

Karin stares into the closet; her face freezes as she sees
something startling.

Karin’s “God’s” action: ATTACKING HER.

Suddenly, she screams in terror, and as if being pursued, runs
across the room, jamming herself into a corner, bringing her
legs and arms up to protect herself.

Karin’s reaction: FIGHTING OFF HER “GOD.”

BEAT * 1 5

Martin grabs her.

Martin’s action: RESTRAINING HER.

She pushes him off and flees to another corner.

Karin’s reaction: ESCAPING MARTIN.

BEAT * 1 6

As if something were crawling up her body, she presses her
fists into her groin, then flails wildly at an unseen assailant.

“God’s” action: TRYING TO RAPE KARIN.

Karin’s reaction: BATTLING “GOD’S” RAPE.

Now David joins Martin and tries to hold her.

David’s reaction: HELPING HOLD HER

2$4 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

BEAT * 1 7

But she breaks away and rushes out of the door into the
INT. UPSTAIRS HALL—SAME

and down the stairs.

Karin’s action: FLEEING.

INT. ON THE STAIRS—SAME
Suddenly, Minus appears at the bottom.

Minus blocks her way. Karin stops and stares at her brother.

Minus’s reaction: TRAPPING HER.

BEAT * 1 8

David grabs her and pulls her down onto the stairs. Martin
arrives with a syringe. Karin fights like a trapped animal.

Martin’s and David’s action: SEDATING HER.

MARTIN
Hold her legs.

She thrashes in their arms as Martin struggles to give her an
iiyection.

Karin’s reaction: WILDLY RESISTING THE NEEDLE.

BEAT * 1 9

She leans against her father and looks steadily into the anx¬
ious face of her brother.

SCENE ANALYSIS + 285

The sedative’s action: CALMING HER.

Karen’s reaction: SURRENDERING TO THE DRUG.
David’s and Martin’s reaction: CALMING THEMSELVES.
Minus’s reaction: TRYING TO UNDERSTAND.

BEAT *20

KARIN

I was suddenly afraid.

Karin’s action: WARNING MINUS.

All three men’s reaction: LISTENING QUIETLY.

KARIN

(slowly explaining
to her brother)

The door opened. But the god
that came out was a spider.

He came towards me and I
saw his face. It was a hor¬
rible, stony face. He crawled
up me and tried to force him¬
self into me. But I defended
myself. The whole time I saw
his eyes. They were calm and
cold. As he couldn’t force his
way into me, he climbed up
onto my breast, onto my face
and went up the wall.

(a long look into
Minus’s eyes)

I have seen God.

286 + ROBERT MCKEE

Although the spider-god rape is a delusion thrown up from
her subconscious, once back in reality she treats the hallu¬
cination with ironic respect. She offers her terrifying dis¬
covery to all three men, but primarily to Minus as a
cautionary tale, warning her brother that prayers will not
be answered.

Step Four: Note Closing Value and Compare with
Opening Value

Karin's encounter with the spider-god turns the scene from hope to
hopelessness. She prays for an epiphany and gives this “miracle” to
her father, knowing that because of his own incapacity for authentic
emotion, he’s hungry for the life experiences of others to fill the pages
of his novels. She offers faith to her husband, but his responses are
limited to sexual gestures and medical posturing. Her “miracle” then
explodes into a nightmare and her trust in God is shattered.

In the final beat, Karin gives her grotesque vision to her
brother as a warning, but this last gesture is slight, compared to the
scene’s dramatization of overwhelming despair. We’re left with the
feeling that intellectualizing love, as the novelist and doctor do
throughout the film, is pitifully weak in the face of the incompre¬
hensible forces that inhabit our natures.

Step Five: Survey the Beats and Locate the Turning
Point

1. Planning Her Escape/Concealing His Guilt

2. Escaping Her “God”/Helping Her

3. Searching for Karin/Helping Him Search

4. Praying/Rushing to Her and Preparing to Recapture Her

5. Preparing for Her Epiphany/Observing Her Madness and
Fighting His Emotions.

6. Stopping Her Hallucination/Protecting Her Dream

7. Pulling Her Away/Standing Her Ground

SCENE ANALYSIS + 287

8. Denying the Existence of God/Defending Her Faith

9. Ordering Martin Away/Retreating

10. Drawing Martin to Her Ritual/Surrendering to Her

11. Caressing Her/Fighting Him Off

12. Praying with All Her Power/Announcing ‘‘God’s” Arrival

13. Appearing to Karin/Receiving Her “God”

14. Attacking Karin/Fighting Off Her “God”

15. Restraining Her/Escaping Martin

16. Trying to Rape Karin/Battling “God”

17. Fleeing/Trapping Her

18. Sedating Her/Resisting the Needle

19. Calming Her/Calming Themselves and Trying to Understand

20. Warning Minus/Listening Quietly

Beats begin lightly, almost comically, then progress rapidly.
Each action/reaction tops the previous exchange, demanding more
from all the characters, and, in particular, demanding more and
more willpower from Karin to survive her horrifying visions. The
gap opens between Beats #13 and #14 when Karin’s expectation of
God results in a sexual attack by a hallucinatory spider. Unlike the
revelation that turns the scene from CASABLANCA, the Turning
Point of this Climax pivots on action—in this case, an action of
appalling power taken by the protagonist’s subconscious mind.

These superb scenes have been used to demonstrate the technique
of analysis. Although they differ in levels of conflict and quality of
actions, they share the same essential form. What is virtually per¬
fect in them would be flawed in others of lesser worth. Ill-written
scenes may lack conflict because desires are not opposed, may be
antiprogressive because they're repetitious or circular, lopsided
because their Turning Points come too early or too late, or lacking
credibility because dialogue and action are “on the nose.” But an
analysis of a problematic scene that tests beats against scene objec¬
tives, altering behavior to fit desire or desire to fit behavior, will
lead to a rewrite that brings the scene to life.

COMPOSITION

Composition means the ordering and linking of scenes. Like a com¬
poser choosing notes and chords, we shape progressions by selecting
what to include, to exclude, to put before and after what. The task can
be harrowing, for as we come to know our subject, every story possi¬
bility seems alive and squirming in a different direction. The disas¬
trous temptation is to somehow include them all. Fortunately, to
guide our efforts the art has evolved canons of composition: Unity
and Variety, Pacing, Rhythm and Tempo, Social and Personal Progres¬
sion, Symbolic and Ironic Ascension, and the Principle of Transition.

UNITY AND VARIETY

A story, even when expressing chaos, must be unified. This sen¬
tence, drawn from any plot, should be logical: “Because of the
Inciting Incident, the Climax had to happen .” JAWS: “Because the
shark killed a swimmer, the sheriff had to destroy the shark.”
KRAMER VS. KRAMER: “Because Kramer’s wife left him and her
child, only husband and wife could finally settle custody.” We
should sense a causal lock between Inciting Incident and Story
Climax. The Inciting Incident is the story’s most profound cause,
and, therefore, the final effect, the Story Climax, should seem
inevitable. The cement that binds them is the Spine, the protago¬
nist’s deep desire to restore the balance of life.

Unity is critical, but not sufficient. Within this unity, we must
induce as much variety as possible. CASABLANCA, for example, is

COMPOSITION * 289

not only one of the most loved films of all time, it’s also one of the
most various. It’s a brilliant Love Story, but more than half the film
is Political Drama. Its excellent action sequences are counter-
pointed by urbane comedy. And it’s the next thing to a Musical.
Over a dozen tunes, strategically placed throughout, comment on
or set up event, meaning, emotion.

Most of us are not capable of this much variety, nor would our
stories warrant it, but we don’t want to hit the same note over and
over, so that every scene sounds like every other. Instead, we seek
the tragic in the comic, the political in the personal, the personal
driving the political, the extraordinary behind the usual, the trivial
in the exalted. The key to varying a repetitious cadence is research.
Superficial knowledge leads to a bland, monotonous telling. With
authorial knowledge we can prepare a feast of pleasures. Or at the
very least, add humor.

PACING

If we slowly turn the screw, increasing tension a little more, a little
more, a little more, scene by scene by scene by scene, we wear the
audience out long before the ending. It goes limp and has no energy
to invest in the Story Climax. Because a story is a metaphor for life,
we expect it to feel like life, to have the rhythm of life. This rhythm
beats between two contradictory desires: On one hand, we desire
serenity, harmony, peace, and relaxation, but too much of this day
after day and we become bored to the point of ennui and need
therapy. As a result, we also desire challenge, tension, danger, even
fear. But too much of this day after day and again we end up in the
rubber room. So the rhythm of life swings between these poles.

The rhythm of a typical day, for example: You wake up full of
energy, meet your gaze in the morning mirror, and say: "Today I’m
going to get something done. No, I mean it for a change. Today I’m
definitely getting something done.” Off you go to "get something
done” through a minefield of missed appointments, unretumed
calls, pointless errands, and unrelenting hassle until you take a wel¬
come midday lunch with friends to chat, sip wine, relocate your

290 + ROBERT MCKEE

sanity, relax and gather your energies so you can go off to do battle
with the demons of the afternoon, hoping to get done all the things
you didn’t get done in the morning—more missed calls, more use¬
less tasks, and never, never enough time.

Finally you hit the highway home, a road packed with cars with
only one person in each. Do you car pool? No. After a hard day on
the job, the last thing you want is to jump into a car with three
other jerks from work. You escape into your car, snap on the radio,
and get in the proper lane according to the music. If classical, you
hug the right; if pop, down the middle of the road; if rock, head
left. We moan about traffic but never do anything about it because,
in truth, we secretly enjoy rush hour; drive-time is the only time
most of us are ever alone. You relax, scratch what needs scratching,
and add a primal scream to the music.

Home for a quick shower, then off into the night looking for
fun. What’s fun? Amusement park rides that scare the life out of
you, a film that makes you suffer emotions you’d never want in
life, a singles bar and the humiliation of rejection. Weary, you fall
into the rack and next dawn start this rhythm all over again.

This alternation between tension and relaxation is the pulse of
living, the rhythm of days, even years. In some films it’s salient, in
others subtle. TENDER MERCIES eases dramatic pressure gently
up, then gently down, each cycle slowly increasing the overall ten¬
sion to Climax; THE FUGITIVE sculpts tension to sharp peaks,
then ebbs briefly before accelerating higher still. Each film speaks
in its natural accent, but never in flat, repetitious, passive non-
events, or in unrelenting, bludgeoning action. Whether Archplot,
Miniplot, or Antiplot, all fine stories flux with the rhythm of life.

We use our act structure to start at a base of tension, then rise
scene by sequence to the Climax of Act One. As we enter Act Two,
we compose scenes that reduce this tension, switching to comedy,
romance, a counterpointing mood that lowers the Act One intensity
so that the audience can catch its breath and reach for more energy.
We coach the audience to move like a long-distance runner who,
rather than loping at a constant pace, speeds, slows, then speeds
again, creating cycles that allow him to reach the limit of his reserves.

COMPOSITION + 291

After retarding pace, we build the progressions of the following act
until we top the previous Climax in intensity and meaning. Act by
act, we tighten and release tension until the final Climax empties out
the audience, leaving it emotionally exhausted but fulfilled. Then a
brief Resolution scene to recuperate before going home.

It’s just like sex. Masters of the bedroom arts pace their love-
making. They begin by taking each other to a state of delicious ten¬
sion short of—and we use the same word in both cases—climax,
then tell a joke and shift positions before building each other to an
even higher tension short of climax; then have a sandwich, watch
TV, and gather energy to then reach greater and greater intensity,
making love in cycles of rising tension until they finally climax
simultaneously and the earth moves and they see colors. The gra¬
cious storyteller makes love to us. He knows we’re capable of a
tremendous release ... if he paces us to it.

RHYTHM AND TEMPO

Rhythm is set by the length of scenes. How long are we in the same
time and place? A typical two-hour feature plays forty to sixty scenes.
This means, on average, a scene lasts two and a half minutes. But not
every scene. Rather, for every one-minute scene there’s a four-minute
scene. For every thirty-second scene, a six-minute scene. In a prop¬
erly formatted screenplay a page equals a minute of screen time.
Therefore, if as you turn through your script, you discover a two-page
scene followed by an eight-page scene, a seven-page scene, three-
page scene, four-page, six-page, five-page, one-page, nine-page—in
other words, if the average length of scene in your script is five pages,
your story will have the pace of a postal worker on Valium.

Most directors’ cameras drink up whatever is visually expres¬
sive in one location within two or three minutes. If a scene goes on
longer, shots become redundant. The editor keeps coming back to
the same establishing shot, same two-shot, close-up. When shots
repeat, expressivity drains away; the film becomes visually dull and
the eye loses interest and wanders from the screen. Do this enough
and you’ll lose the audience for good. The average scene length of

292 + ROBERT MCKEE

two to three minutes is a reaction to the nature of cinema and the
audience’s hunger for a stream of expressive moments.

When we study the many exceptions to this principle, they only
prove the point. TWELVE ANGRY MEN takes place over two days
in a jury room. In essence, it consists of two fifty-minute scenes in
one location, with a brief break for a night’s sleep. But because it’s
based on a play, director Sidney Lumet could take advantage of its
French Scenes.

In the Neoclassical period (1750-1850) the French theatre
strictly obeyed the Unities: A set of conventions that restricted a
play’s performance to one basic action or plot, taking place in one
location within the time it takes to perform. But the French real¬
ized that within this unity of time and space the entrance or exit of
principal characters radically changes the dynamics of relationships
and in effect creates a new scene. For example, in a garden setting
young lovers play a scene together, then her mother discovers
them. Her entrance so alters character relationships that it effects a
new scene. This trio has a scene, then the young man exits. His
exit so rearranges the relationship between mother and daughter
that masks fall and a new scene begins.

Understanding the principle of French scenes , Lumet broke the
jury room into sets within the set—the drinking fountain, cloakroom,
window, one end of the table versus the other. Within these subloca¬
tions, he staged French Scenes: First jury members #1 and #2, then #2
exits while #5 and #7 enter, CUT TO #6 alone, CUT TO all twelve,
CUT TO five of them off in a comer, and so on. The over eighty
French Scenes in TWELVE ANGRY MEN build an exciting rhythm.

MY DINNER WITH ANDRE is even more contained: a two-
hour film about a two-hour dinner with two characters and there¬
fore no French Scenes. Yet the film pulses with rhythm because it's
paced with scenes created, as in literature, by painting word pic¬
tures on the imagination of the listener: the adventure in the Polish
forest, Andre’s friends burying him alive in a bizarre ritual, the
synchronistic phenomenon he encounters in his office. These eru¬
dite recountings wrap an Education Plot around an Education Plot.
As Andre (Andre Gregory) relates his quixotic adventure toward

COMPOSITION + 293

spiritual development, he so cants his friend’s view of life that
Wally (Wallace Shawn) leaves the restaurant a changed man.

Tempo is the level of activity within a scene via dialogue, action,
or a combination. For example, lovers talking quietly from pillow to
pillow may have low tempo; an argument in a courtroom, high
tempo. A character staring out a window coming to a vital life deci¬
sion may have low tempo; a riot, high tempo.

In a well-told story, the progression of scenes and sequences
accelerates pace. As we head toward act climaxes, we take advan¬
tage of rhythm and tempo to progressively shorten scenes while the
activity in them becomes more and more brisk. Like music and
dance, story is kinetic. We want to use cinema’s sensory power to
hurl the audience toward act climaxes because scenes of major
reversal are, in fact, generally long, slow, and tense. “Climactic”
doesn’t mean short and explosive; it means profound change. Such
scenes are not to be skimmed over. So we open them and let them
breathe; we retard pace while the audience holds its breath, won¬
dering what’s going to happen next.

Again, the Law of Diminishing Returns applies: The more
often we pause, the less effective a pause is. If the scenes before a
major Climax are long and slow, the big scene in which we want
the tension to hold falls flat. Because we’ve dragged the energies of
the audience through sluggish scenes of minor importance, events
of great moment are greeted with a shrug. Instead, we must “earn
the pause” by telescoping rhythm while spiraling tempo, so that
when the Climax arrives, we can put the brakes on, stretch the
playing time, and the tension holds.

The problem with this design, of course, is that it’s a cliche.
D. W. Griffith mastered it. Filmmakers of the Silent Era knew that
something as trivial as another chase to collar the bad guys can feel
tremendous if pace is excited by making scenes ever shorter and
tempo ever hasty. But techniques don’t become cliches unless they
have something important going for them in the first place. We,
therefore, cannot, out of ignorance or arrogance, ignore the prin¬
ciple. If we lengthen and slow scenes prior to a major reversal, we
cripple our Climax.

294 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

Pace begins in the screenplay. Cliche or not, we must control
rhythm and tempo. It needn’t be a symmetrical swelling of activity
and shaving of scene lengths, but progressions must be shaped.
For if we don’t, the film editor will. And if to trim our sloppy work
he cuts some of our favorite moments, we have no one to blame
but ourselves. We’re screenwriters, not refugees from the novel.
Cinema is a unique art form. The screenwriter must master the
aesthetics of motion pictures and create a screenplay that prepares
the way for the artists who follow.

EXPRESSING PROGRESSION

When a story genuinely progresses it calls upon greater and greater
human capacity, demands greater and greater willpower, generates
greater and greater change in characters’ lives, and places them at
greater and greater jeopardy. How are we to express this? How will
the audience sense the progressions? There are four primary tech¬
niques.

SOCIAL PROGRESSION

Widen the impact of character actions into society.

Let your story begin intimately, involving only a few principal char¬
acters. But as the telling moves forward, allow their actions to
ramify outward into the world around them, touching and
changing the lives of more and more people. Not all at once.
Rather, spread the effect gradually through the progressions.

LONE STAR: Two men searching for spent shells on a deserted
rifle range in Texas uncover the skeletal remains of a sheriff who van¬
ished decades before. Evidence at the scene leads the current sheriff
to suspect that his own father may have committed the murder. As he
investigates, the story spreads outward into society and back through
time, tracing a pattern of corruption and injustice that has touched
and changed the lives of three generations of Texan-, Mexican- and
African Americans—virtually every citizen in Rio County.

COMPOSITION + 295

MEN IN BLACK: A chance encounter between a farmer and a
fugitive alien searching for a rare gem slowly ramifies outward to
jeopardize all of creation.

This principle of starting with intimate problems that ramify
outward into the world to build powerful progressions explains why
certain professions are overrepresented in the roles of protagonists.
This is why we tend to tell stories about lawyers, doctors, warriors,
politicians, scientists—people so positioned in society by profes¬
sion that if something goes haywire in their private lives, the writer
can expand the action into society.

Imagine a story that begins like this: The President of the
United States gets up one morning to shave and as he stares in the
mirror, he hallucinates about imaginary enemies around the globe.
He tells no one, but soon his wife realizes he’s gone mad. His close
associates too. They gather and decide that since he has only six
months left in office, why spoil things now? They’ll cover up for
him. But we know he has "his finger on the button” and a madman
in this position could turn our troubled world into universal hell.

PERSONAL PROGRESSION

Drive actions deeply into the intimate relationships and
inner lives of the characters.

If the logic of your setting doesn’t allow you to go wide, then you
must go deep. Start with a personal or inner conflict that demands
balancing, yet seems relatively solvable. Then, as the work pro¬
gresses, hammer the story downward—emotionally, psychologi¬
cally, physically, morally—to the dark secrets, the unspoken truths
that hide behind a public mask.

ORDINARY PEOPLE is confined to the family, a friend, and
a doctor. From a tension between mother and son that seems
solvable with communication and love, it descends to grievous
pain. As the father slowly comes to realize he must choose
between the sanity of his son and the unity of his family, the
story drives the child to the brink of suicide, the mother to reveal

296 4 ROBERT MCKEE

her hatred of her own child, and the husband to lose a wife he
deeply loves.

CHINATOWN is an elegant design that combines both tech¬
niques, reaching simultaneously wide and deep. A private eye is
hired to investigate a man for adultery. Then, like an oil slick, the
story moves outward in an ever-widening circle that engulfs city
hall, millionaire conspirators, farmers of the San Fernando Valley,
until it contaminates all the citizens of Los Angeles. At the same
time it plunges inward. Gittes is under constant assault: kicks to the
groin, blows to the head, his nose split open. Mulwray is killed,
incest exposed between father and daughter until the protagonist’s
tragic past repeats to trigger the death of Evelyn Mulwray and throw
an innocent child into the hands of an insane father/grandfather.

SYMBOLIC ASCENSION

Build the symbolic charge of the story's imagery from
the particular to the universal, the specific to the
archetypal.

A good story well told fosters a good film. But a good story well told
with the added power of subliminal symbolism lifts the telling to
the next level of expressivity, and the payoff may be a great film.
Symbolism is very compelling. Like images in our dreams, it
invades the unconscious mind and touches us deeply—as long as
we’re unaware of its presence. If, in a heavy-handed way, we label
images as “symbolic,” their effect is destroyed. But if they are
slipped quietly, gradually, and unassumingly into the telling, they
move us profoundly.

Symbolic progression works in this way: start with actions,
locations, and roles that represent only themselves. But as the story
progresses, chose images that gather greater and greater meaning,
until by the end of the telling characters, settings, and events stand
for universal ideas.

THE DEER HUNTER introduces steel workers in Pennsylvania
who like to hunt, drink beer, and carouse. They’re as ordinary as

COMPOSITION 4 297

the town they live in. But as events progress, sets, roles, and actions
become more and more symbolically charged, building from the
tiger cages in Vietnam to the highly symbolic scenes in a Saigon
casino where men play Russian Roulette for money, culminating in
a Crisis at the top of a mountain. The protagonist, Michael (Robert
De Niro) progresses from factory worker to warrior to “The
Hunter," the man who kills.

The film's Controlling Idea is: We save our own humanity when
we stop killing other living beings . If the hunter spills enough blood,
sooner or later he runs out of targets and turns the gun on himself.
He either literally kills himself, as does Nick (Christopher Walken),
or more likely, he kills himself in the sense that he stops feeling
anything and falls dead inside. The Crisis sends Michael in his
hunter's garb, armed with a weapon, to a mountaintop. There, on a
precipice, the prey, a magnificent elk, comes out of the mist. An
archetypal image: hunter and prey at the top of a mountain. Why the
top of a mountain? Because tops of mountains are places where
“great things happen.” Moses is given the Ten Commandments,
not in his kitchen, but at the top of a mountain.

THE TERMINATOR takes symbolic progression in a different
direction, not up the mountain but into the maze. Opening with
step-down imagery of commonplace people in commonplace set¬
tings, it tells the story of Sarah Connor, a fast-food waitress in Los
Angeles. Suddenly, the Terminator and Reese explode into the pre¬
sent from the year 2029, and pursue Sarah through the streets of
L.A., one trying to kill her, the other to save her.

We learn that in the future robots become self-aware and try to
stamp out the human race that created them. They nearly succeed
when the remnants of humanity are led in a revolt by the charis¬
matic John Connor. He turns the tide against the robots and all but
stamps them out, when the robots invent a time machine and send
into the past an assassin to kill Connor's mother before he’s born,
thus eliminating Connor from existence and winning the war for
the robots. Connor captures the time machine, discovers the plan,
and sends back his lieutenant, Reese, to kill this monster before it
kills his mother.

298 + ROBERT MCKEE

The streets of Los Angeles conspire into the ancient archetype
of the labyrinth. Freeways, alleyways, cul-de-sacs, and corridors of
buildings twist and turn the characters until they work their way
down to its tangled heart. There Sarah, like Theseus at the center of
the Minoan maze battling the half-man/half-bull Minotaur, con¬
fronts the half-man/half-robot Terminator. If she vanquishes the
demon, she will, like the Virgin Mary, give birth to the savior of
humanity, John Connor (JC), and raise him to lead humanity to
deliverance in the coming holocaust. Sarah progresses from wait¬
ress to goddess, and the film's symbolic progression lifts it above
almost all others in its genre.

IRONIC ASCENSION

Turn progression on irony.

Irony is the subtlest manifestation of story pleasure, that delicious
sense of “Ah, life is just like that.” It sees life in duality; it plays
with our paradoxical existence, aware of the bottomless chasm
between what seems and what is. Verbal irony is found in the dis¬
crepancy between words and their meanings—a primary source of
jokes. But in story, irony plays between actions and results—the
primary source of story energy, between appearance and reality—
the primary source of truth and emotion.

An ironic sensibility is a precious asset, a razor to cut to the truth,
but it can’t be used directly. It does us no good to have a character
wander the story saying, “How ironic!” like symbolism, to point at
irony destroys it. Irony must be coolly, casually released with a seem¬
ingly innocent unawareness of the effect it’s creating and a faith that
the audience will get it. Because irony is by nature slippery, it defies a
hard and fast definition, and is best explained by example. Below are
six ironic story patterns with an example for each.

1. He gets at last what he's always wanted . . . but too
late to have it.

OTHELLO: The Moor finally gets what he always wanted,

COMPOSITION 4 299

a wife who is true to him and who never betrayed him with
another man ... but when he finds that out, it’s too late,
because he just killed her.

2. He's pushed further and further from his goal . . . only
to discover that in fact he's been led right to it.

RUTHLESS PEOPLE: The greedy businessman, Sam (Danny
Devito), steals an idea from Sandy (Helen Slater) and makes
a fortune without paying her a cent of royalties. Sandy’s hus¬
band, Ken (Judge Reinhold), decides to kidnap Sam’s wife,
Barbara (Bette Midler), and ransom her for the two million
dollars he feels his wife is owed. But when Ken abducts Bar¬
bara, he doesn’t know that Sam is coming home to murder
his shrewish and overweight wife. Ken calls Sam
demanding millions, but the gleeful Sam puts him off. Ken
keeps lowering the price until at ten thousand dollars Sam
says, “Oh, why don’t you just kill her and get it over with."

Meanwhile, Barbara, held captive in the Kessler base¬
ment, has turned her prison into a spa. She’s following all
the exercise programs on TV, Sandy’s an excellent natural
foods cook, and as a result, Barbara loses more weight than
she ever did at the best fat farms in America. Consequently,
she loves her kidnappers. And when they tell her they’ll
have to let her go because her husband won’t pay the
ransom, she turns to them and says, “I'll get the money for
ya.” That was Act One.

3. He throws away what he later finds is indispensable to
his happiness.

MOULIN ROUGE: The crippled artist Toulouse-Lautrec (Jose
Ferrer) falls in love with the beautiful Suzanne (Myriamme
Hayem) but can’t bring himself to tell her this. She accompa¬
nies him as a friend around Paris. Lautrec becomes convinced
that the only reason she spends time with him is that it gives
her the opportunity to meet handsome men. In a drunken
rage he accuses her of using him and storms out of her life.

300 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

Some time later he receives a letter from Suzanne: “Dear
Toulouse, I always hoped that some day you might love me.
Now I realize that you never will. So I have taken the offer
of another man. I don’t love him, but he’s kind and as you
know my situation is desperate. Adieu.” Lautrec frantically
searches for her, but indeed she’s left to marry another. So
he drinks himself to death.

4. To reach a goal he unwittingly takes the precise steps
necessary to lead him away.

TOOTSIE: Michael (Dustin Hoffman), an out-of-work actor
whose perfectionism has alienated every producer in New
York, impersonates a woman and is cast in a soap opera. On
the set he meets and falls in love with Julie (Jessica Lange).
But he’s such a brilliant actor, her father (Charles Durning)
wants to marry him while Julie suspects he’s a lesbian.

5. The action he takes to destroy something becomes
exactly what are needed to be destroyed by it.

RAIN: The religious bigot Reverend Davidson (Walter
Huston) battles to save the soul of the prostitute Sadie
Thompson (Joan Crawford), but falls into lust for her, rapes
her, then kills himself in shame.

6 . He comes into possession of something he's certain will
make him miserable, does everything possible to get
rid of it . . . only to discover it's the gift of happiness.

BRINGING UP BABY: When the madcap socialite Susan
(Katharine Hepburn) inadvertently steals the car of the
naive and repressed paleontologist Dr. David Huxley (Cary
Grant), she likes what she sees and sticks to him like glue.
He tries everything possible to get rid of her, but she foils
his lunatic evasions, chiefly by stealing his bone, the “inter¬
costal clavicle” of a brontosaurus. (If there were such a
thing as an “intercostal clavicle,” it would belong to a crea¬
ture with its head attached well below its shoulders.)

COMPOSITION + 301

Susan’s persistence pays off as she transforms David from
fossilized child to life-embracing adult.

The key to ironic progression is certainty and precision. Like
CHINATOWN, SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, and many other superb
films, these are stories of protagonists who feel they know for cer¬
tain what they must do and have a precise plan how to do it. They
think life is A, B, C, D, E. That’s just when life likes to turn you
around, kick you in the butt, and grin: “Not today, my friend. Today
it’s E, D, C, B, A. Sorry.”

PRINCIPLE OF TRANSITION

A story without a sense of progression tends to stumble from one
scene to the next. It has little continuity because nothing links its
events. As we design cycles of rising action, we must at the same
time transition the audience smoothly through them. Between two
scenes, therefore, we need a third element, the link that joins the
tail of Scene A with the head of Scene B. Generally, we find this
third element in one of two places: what the scenes have in
common or what they have in opposition.

The third element is the hinge for a transition; some¬
thing held in common by two scenes or counterpointed
between them.

Examples:

1. A characterization trait. In common: cut from a bratty child
to a childish adult. In opposition: cut from awkward protag¬
onist to elegant antagonist.

2. An action. In common: From the foreplay of lovemaking to
savoring the afterglow. In opposition: From chatter to cold
silence.

3. An object. In common: From greenhouse interior to woodland
exterior. In opposition: From the Congo to Antarctica.

302 « ROBERT MCKEE

4. A word. In common: A phrase repeated from scene to
scene. In opposition: From compliment to curse.

5. A quality of light. In common: From shadows at dawn to
shade at sunset. In opposition: From blue to red.

6. A sound. In common: From waves lapping a shore to the
rise and fall of a sleeper’s breath. In opposition: From silk
caressing skin to the grinding of gears.

7. An idea. In common: From a child’s birth to an overture. In
opposition: From a painter’s empty canvas to an old man dying.

After a century of filmmaking, transition cliches abound. Yet
we can’t put down the task. An imaginative study of almost any two
scenes will find a link.

13

CRISIS, CLIMAX,
RESOLUTION

CRISIS

Crisis is the third of the five-part form. It means decision. Charac¬
ters make spontaneous decisions each time they open this mouths
to say "this” not “that.” In each scene they make a decision to take
one action rather than another. But Crisis with a capital C is the
ultimate decision. The Chinese ideogram for Crisis is two terms:
Danger/Opportunity—“danger” in that the wrong decision at this
moment will lose forever what we want; “opportunity” in that the
right choice will achieve our desire.

The protagonist's quest has carried him through the Progres¬
sive Complications until he’s exhausted all actions to achieve his
desire, save one. He now finds himself at the end of the line. His
next action is his last. No tomorrow. No second chance. This
moment of dangerous opportunity is the point of greatest tension in
the story as both protagonist and audience sense that the question
"How will this turn out?” will be answered out of the next action.

The Crisis is the story’s Obligatory Scene. From the Inciting
Incident on, the audience has been anticipating with growing vivid¬
ness the scene in which the protagonist will be face to face with the
most focused, powerful forces of antagonism in his existence. This
is the dragon, so to speak, that guards the Object of Desire: be it
the literal dragon of JAWS or the metaphorical dragon of meaning-

3°3

304 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

lessness in TENDER MERCIES. The audience leans into the Crisis
filled with expectation mingled with uncertainty.

The Crisis must be true dilemma—a choice between irrecon¬
cilable goods, the lesser of two evils, or the two at once that places
the protagonist under the maximum pressure of his life.

This dilemma confronts the protagonist who, when
face-to-face with the most powerful and focused forces
of antagonism in his life, must make a decision to take
one action or another in a last effort to achieve his
Object of Desire.

How the protagonist chooses here gives us the most pene¬
trating view of his deep character, the ultimate expression of his
humanity.

This scene reveals the story's most important value. If there's
been any doubt about which value is central, as the protagonist
makes the Crisis Decision, the primary value comes to the fore.

At Crisis the protagonist’s willpower is most severely tested. As
we know from life, decisions are far more difficult to make than
actions are to take. We often put off doing something for as long as
possible, then as we finally make the decision and step into the
action, we’re surprised by its relative ease. We’re left to wonder
why we dreaded doing it until we realize that most of life’s actions
are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.

CRISIS WITHIN THE CLIMAX

The action the protagonist chooses to take becomes the story’s con¬
summate event, causing a positive, negative, or ironically posi¬
tive/negative Story Climax. If, however, as the protagonist takes the
climactic action, we once more pry apart the gap between expecta¬
tion and result, if we can split probability from necessity just one
more time, we may create a majestic ending the audience will trea¬
sure for a lifetime. For a Climax built around a Turning Point is
the most satisfying of all.

CRISIS, CLIMAX, RESOLUTION 4 305

We've taken the protagonist through progressions that exhaust
one action after another until he reaches the limit and thinks he
finally understands his world and knows what he must do in a last
effort. He draws on the dregs of his willpower, chooses an action he
believes will achieve his desire, but, as always, his world won’t coop¬
erate. Reality splits and he must improvise. The protagonist may or
may not get what he wants, but it won’t be the way he expects.

Compare STAR WARS with THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: At
the Crisis of STAR WARS Luke Skywalker attacks the "Death Star,”
a manmade fortress as huge as a planet. But it’s not fully con¬
structed. A vulnerable slot lies open on one side of the sphere. Luke
must not only attack into the slot, but hit a vulnerable spot within
it. He’s an expert fighter pilot but tries without success to hit the
spot. As he maneuvers his craft by computer, he hears the voice of
Obi-Wan Kenobi: “Go with the Force, go with the Force.”

A sudden dilemma of irreconcilable goods: the computer
versus the mysterious “Force.” He wrestles with the anguish of
choice, then pushes his computer aside, flies by instinct into the
slot, and fires a torpedo that hits the spot. The destruction of the
Death Star climaxes the film, a straight action out of the Crisis.

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, by contrast, corkscrews its
Climax: Face to face with Darth Vader, Luke is met by a Crisis of
courage. Irreconcilable goods: He could attack and kill Vader, or he
could flee and save his life. The lesser of two evils: He could attack
Vader and be killed, or he could flee, making him a coward and
betraying his friends. Luke musters his courage and chooses to
fight. However, when Vader suddenly steps back and says: “You
can’t kill me, Luke . . . I'm your father," Luke’s reality splinters. In
a flash he realizes the truth and now must make yet another Crisis
Decision: whether to kill his father.

Luke confronts the agony of this decision and chooses to fight.
But Vader cuts off his hand and Luke drops to the deck. Still, it’s
not over. Vader announces that he wants Luke to join his campaign
to bring “order to things” in the universe. A second Gap opens as
Luke realizes that his father doesn't want him dead, he’s offering
him a job. He must make a third Crisis Decision, a lesser-of-two-

306 4 ROBERT MCKEE

evils dilemma: to join the “dark side” or take his own life? He
makes the heroic choice, and as these Gaps explode, the Climax
delivers deep rushes of insight uniting two films.

Placement of the Crisis

The location of the Crisis is determined by the length

of the climactic action.

Generally, Crisis and Climax happen in the last minutes and in the
same scene.

THELMA & LOUISE: At Crisis the women brave the lesser of
two evils: imprisonment versus death. They look at each other and
make their Crisis Decision to "go for it,” a courageous choice to take
their own lives. They immediately drive their car into the Grand
Canyon—an unusually brief Climax elongated by filming it in slow-
motion and freeze-framing on the car suspended over the abyss.

However, in other stories the Climax becomes an expansive
action with its own progressions. As a result, it's possible to use the
Crisis Decision to turn the Penultimate Act Climax, filling all of the
final act with climactic action.

CASABLANCA: Rick pursues lisa until she surrenders to him
in the Act Two Climax, saying that he must make the decisions for
everyone. In the next scene, Laszlo urges Rick to rejoin the antifas¬
cist cause. This irreconcilable-goods dilemma turns the act on
Rick's selfless Crisis Decision to return lisa to Laszlo and put wife
and husband on the plane to America, a character-defining choice
that reverses his conscious desire for lisa. The third act of
CASABLANCA is fifteen minutes of climactic action that unravels
Rick's surprise-filled scheme to help the couple escape.

In rarer examples the Crisis Decision immediately follows the
Inciting Incident and the entire film becomes climactic action.

JAMES BOND: Inciting Incident: Bond is offered the task of
hunting down an arch-villain. Crisis Decision: Bond takes the
assignment—a right/wrong choice and not a true dilemma, for it
would never occur to him to choose otherwise. From this point on,

CRISIS, CLIMAX, RESOLUTION 4 307

all Bond films are an elaborate progression of a single action: the
pursuit of the villain. Bond never makes another decision of sub¬
stance, simply choices of which ploys to use in the pursuit.

LEAVING LAS VEGAS has the identical form. Inciting Inci¬
dent: the protagonist is fired and given a sizable severance check.
He immediately makes his Crisis Decision to go to Las Vegas and
drink himself to death. From this point on the film becomes a sad
progression toward death as he follows his desire.

IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES: Inciting Incident: Lovers
meet within the first ten minutes and decide to abandon society
and normalcy for a life of sexual obsession. The remaining hun¬
dred minutes are devoted to sexual experimentations that eventu¬
ally lead to death.

The great risk of placing the Crisis on the heels of the Inciting
Incident is repetitiousness. Whether it's high-budget action
repeating patterns of chase/fight, chase/fight, or low-budget repeti¬
tions of drinking/drinking/drinking or lovemaking/lovemaking/
lovemaking, the problems of variety and progression are stag¬
gering. Yet mastery of this task may produce brilliance, as it did in
the examples above.

Design of the Crisis

Although the Crisis Decision and climactic action usually take
place in continuous time within the same location at the very end
of the telling, it's not uncommon for the Crisis decision to occur in
one location, the Story Climax later in another setting.

The value of love in KRAMER VS. KRAMER turns negative at the
Act Two Climax as a judge awards custody to Kramer’s ex-wife. As Act
Three opens Kramer’s lawyer lays out the situation: Kramer has lost,
but he could win on appeal. To do so, however, he’ll have to put his
son on the witness stand and make the child choose with whom he
wants to live. The boy will probably choose his father, and Kramer will
win. But to put a child at this tender age in public and force him to
choose between his mother and his father will psychologically scar
him for life. A double dilemma of the needs of self versus the needs of

308 « ROBERT MCKEE

another, the suffering of the self versus the suffering of another.
Kramer looked up and said, “No, I can’t do that.” Cut to the Climax: a
walk in Central Park and a river of tears as the father explains to his
son how their life will be now that they’ll live apart.

If the Crisis takes place in one location and the Climax later in
another, we must splice them together on a cut, fusing them in
filmic time and space. If we do not, if we cut from the Crisis to
other material—a subplot, for example—we drain the pent-up
energy of the audience into an anticlimax.

The Crisis decision must be a deliberately static moment.

This is the Obligatory Scene. Do not put it offscreen , or skim over
it. The audience wants to suffer with the protagonist through the
pain of this dilemma. We freeze this moment because the rhythm
of the last movement depends on it. An emotional momentum has
built to this point, but the Crisis dams its flow. As the protagonist
goes through this decision, the audience leans in, wondering:
“What's he going to do? What’s he going to do?” Tension builds
and builds, then as the protagonist makes a choice of action, that
compressed energy explodes into the Climax.

THELMA & LOUISE: This Crisis is masterfully delayed as the
women stutter over the word “go.” “I say, let’s go.” “Go? What do you
mean 'go’?” “Well. .. just go.” “You mean . . . go?” They hesitate and
hesitate as tension builds and the audience prays they won't kill them¬
selves but at the same time is thrilled by their courage. As they put the
car in gear, the dynamite of compacted anxiety blasts into the Climax.

THE DEER HUNTER: Michael stalks to the top of a mountain.
But with his prey in his sights, he pauses. Tension builds and
tightens as the moment extends and the audience dreads the
killing of this beautiful elk. At this Crisis point the protagonist
makes a decision that takes him through a profound change of
character. He lowers his weapon and transforms within from a
man who takes life to a man who saves life. This stunning reversal
turns the Penultimate Act Climax. The pent-up compassion in the
audience pours into the story's last movement as Michael now

CRISIS, CLIMAX, RESOLUTION 4 309

rushes back to Vietnam to save his friend’s life, filling the final act
with rising climactic action.

CLIMAX

Story Climax is the fourth of the five-part structure. This crowning
Major Reversal is not necessarily full of noise and violence. Rather,
it must be full of meaning. If I could send a telegram to the film
producers of the world, it would be these three words: “Meaning
Produces Emotion ” Not money; not sex; not special effects; not
movie stars; not lush photography.

MEANING: A revolution in values from positive to neg¬
ative or negative to positive with or without irony—a
value swing at maximum charge that's absolute and
irreversible. The meaning of that change moves the
heart of the audience.

The action that creates this change must be “pure,” clear, and
self-evident, requiring no explanation. Dialogue or narration to
spell out it out is boring and redundant.

This action must be appropriate to the needs of the story. It
may be catastrophic: The sublime battle sequence that climaxes
GLORY, or outwardly trivial: A woman rises from a quiet talk with
her husband, packs a suitcase, and goes out the door. That action,
in the context of ORDINARY PEOPLE, is overwhelming. At Crisis,
the values of family love and unity tip toward the positive as the
husband desperately exposes his family’s bitter secret. But at
Climax, the moment his wife walks out, they swing to an absolute,
irreversible negative. If, on the other hand, she were to stay, her
hatred of her son might finally drive the boy to suicide. So her
leaving is then toned with a positive counterpoint that ends the
film on a painful, but overall negative, irony.

The Climax of the last act is your great imaginative leap.
Without it, you have no story. Until you have it, your characters
wait like suffering patients praying for a cure.

310 « ROBERT MCKEE

Once the Climax is in hand, stories are in a significant way
rewritten backward, not forward. The flow of life moves from cause
to effect, but the flow of creativity often flows from effect to cause.
An idea for the Climax pops unsupported into the imagination.
Now we must work backward to support it in the fictional reality,
supplying the hows and whys. We work back from the ending to
make certain that by Idea and Counter-Idea every image, beat,
action, or line of dialogue somehow relates to or sets up this grand
payoff. All scenes must be thematically or structurally justified in
the light of the Climax. If they can be cut without disturbing the
impact of the ending, they must be cut.

If logic allows, climax subplots within the Central Plot’s
Climax. This is a wonderful effect; one final action by the protago¬
nist settles everything. When Rick puts Laszlo and lisa on the plane
in CASABLANCA, he settles the Love Story main plot and the Polit¬
ical Drama subplot, converts Captain Renault to patriotism, kills
Major Strasser, and, we feel, is the key to winning World War II
. . . now that Rick is back in the fight.

If this multiplying effect is impossible, the least important sub¬
plots are best climaxed earliest, followed by the next most impor¬
tant, building overall to Climax of the Central Plot.

William Goldman argues that the key to all story endings is to give
the audience what it wants, but not the way it expects. A very provoca¬
tive principle: First of all, what does the audience want? Many pro¬
ducers state without blinking that the audience wants a happy
ending. They say this because up-ending films tend to make more
money than down-ending films.

The reason for this is that a small percentage of the audience
won’t go to any film that might give it an unpleasant experience. Gen¬
erally their excuse is that they have enough tragedy in their lives. But if
we were to look closely, we’d discover that they not only avoid negative
emotions in movies, they avoid them in life. Such people think that
happiness means never suffering, so they never feel anything deeply.
The depth of our joy is in direct proportion to what we’ve suffered.
Holocaust survivors, for example, don’t avoid dark films. They go
because such stories resonate with their past and are deeply cathartic.

CRISIS, CLIMAX, RESOLUTION + 311

In fact, down-ending films are often huge commercial suc¬
cesses: DANGEROUS LIAISONS, eighty million dollars; THE WAR
OF THE ROSES, one hundred fifty million; THE ENGLISH
PATIENT, two hundred twenty-five million. No one can count THE
GODFATHER, PART IPs money. For the vast majority doesn’t care
if a film ends up or down. What the audience wants is emotional satis¬
faction —a Climax that fulfills anticipation. How should THE GOD¬
FATHER, PART II end? Michael forgives Fredo, quits the mob, and
moves to Boston with his family to sell insurance? The Climax of
this magnificent film is truthful, beautiful, and very satisfying.

Who determines which particular emotion will satisfy an audi¬
ence at the end of a film? The writer. From the way he tells his
story from the beginning, he whispers to the audience: “Expect an
up-ending” or “Expect a down-ending” or “Expect irony.” Having
pledged a certain emotion, it’d be ruinous not to deliver. So we give
the audience the experience we’ve promised, but not in the way it
expects. This is what separates artist from amateur.

In Aristotle's words, an ending must be both “inevitable and
unexpected.” Inevitable in the sense that as the Inciting Incident
occurs, everything and anything seems possible, but at Climax, as
the audience looks back through the telling, it should seem that the
path the telling took was the only path. Given the characters and
their world as we’ve come to understand it, the Climax was
inevitable and satisfying. But at the same time it must be unex¬
pected, happening in a way the audience could not have anticipated.

Anyone can deliver a happy ending—just give the characters
everything they want. Or a downer—just kill everybody. An artist
gives us the emotion he’s promised . . . but with a rush of unex¬
pected insight that he’s withheld to a Turning Point within the
Climax itself. So that as the protagonist improvises his final effort,
he may or may not achieve his desire, but the flood of insight that
pours from the gap delivers the hoped-for emotion but in a way we
could never have foreseen.

The Turning Point within the Climax of LOVE SERENADE is a
recent and perfect example. This brilliant Gap hurls the audience
back through the entire film to glimpse with shock and delight the

312 « ROBERT MCKEE

maniacal truth that has been lurking beneath every scene.

The key to a great film ending, as Francois Truffaut put it, is to
create a combination of “Spectacle and Truth.” When Truffaut says
“Spectacle,” he doesn’t mean explosive effects. He means a Climax
written, not for the ear, but the eye. By “Truth” he means Control¬
ling Idea. In other words, Truffaut is asking us to create the Key
Image of the film—a single image that sums up and concentrates
all meaning and emotion. Like the coda of a symphony, the Key
Image within the climactic action echoes and resonates all that has
gone before. It is an image that is so tuned to the telling that when
it’s remembered the whole film comes back with a jolt.

GREED: McTeague collapsing into the desert, chained to the
corpse he just killed. THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE:
Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) dying as the wind blows his
gold dust back into the mountains. LA DOLCE VITA: Rubini (Mar¬
cello Mastroianni) smiling good-bye to his ideal woman—an ideal,
he realizes, that doesn't exist. THE CONVERSATION: The para¬
noid Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) gutting his apartment in search
of a hidden microphone. THE SEVENTH SEAL: The Knight (Max
von Sydow) leading his family into oblivion. THE KID: The Little
Chap (Charlie Chaplin) taking the Kid (Jackie Coogan) by the hand
to lead him to a happy future. SLING BLADE: Karl Childers (Billy
Bob Thornton) staring in blood-chilling silence out of the window
of the lunatic asylum. Key Images of this quality are rarely
achieved.

RESOLUTION

The Resolution, the fifth of the five-part structure, is any material
left after Climax and has three possible uses.

First, the logic of the telling may not provide an opportunity to
climax a subplot before or during the Climax of the Central Plot, so
it’ll need a scene of its own at the very end. This, however, can be
awkward. The story's emotional heart is in the main plot. More¬
over, the audience will be leaning toward the exits, yet forced to sit
through a scene of secondary interest.

CRISIS, CLIMAX, RESOLUTION « 313

The problem can be solved, however.

THE IN-LAWS: The daughter of Dr. Sheldon Kornpett (Alan
Arkin) is engaged to be married to the son of Vince Ricardo (Peter
Falk). Vince is a crazed CIA agent who virtually kidnaps Sheldon
out of his dental office and carries him off on a mission to stop a
lunatic dictator from destroying the international monetary system
with counterfeit twenty-dollar bills. The Central Plot climaxes with
Vince and Sheldon fending off a firing squad, bringing down the
dictator, then secretly pocketing five million dollars each.

But the marriage subplot has been left open. So writer Andrew
Bergman cut from the firing squad to a Resolution scene outside
the wedding. As the party waits impatiently, the fathers arrive by
parachute, wearing tuxedos. Each gives his respective son and
daughter a cash gift of $i million. Suddenly a car screeches up and
an angry CIA agent gets out. Tension tightens. It looks as if the
main plot is back and the fathers will be busted for stealing the ten
million. The stern-faced CIA agent stalks up and is indeed angry.
Why? Because he wasn't invited to the wedding. What’s more, he
took up a collection at the office and has a fifty-dollar U.S. Savings
Bond for bride and groom. The fathers accept his lavish gift and
welcome him to the festivities. FADE OUT.

Bergman tweaked the main plot in the Resolution. Imagine if it
had ended in front of the firing squad, then cut to a garden wed¬
ding with happy families reunited. The scene would have dragged
on as the audience squirmed in its seats. But by bringing the Cen¬
tral Plot back to life for just a moment, the screenwriter gave it a
comic false twist, yoked his Resolution back to the body of the film,
and held tension to the end.

A second use of a Resolution is to show the spread of climactic
effects. If a film expresses progressions by widening into society,
its Climax may be restricted to the principal characters. The audi¬
ence, however, has come to know many supporting roles whose
lives will be changed by the climactic action. This motivates a social
event that satisfies our curiosity by bringing the entire cast to one
location where the camera can track around to show us how these
lives have been changed: the birthday party, the picnic at the beach,

314 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

an Easter Egg hunt in STEEL MAGNOLIAS, a satiric title roll in
ANIMAL HOUSE.

Even if the first two uses don’t apply, all films need a Resolution
as a courtesy to the audience. For if the Climax has moved the film-
goers, if they’re laughing helplessly, riveted with terror, flushed with
social outrage, wiping away tears, it’s rude suddenly to go black and
roll the titles. This is the cue to leave, and they will attempt to do so
jangling with emotion, stumbling over one another in the dark,
dropping their car keys on the Pepsi-sticky floor. A film needs what
the theatre calls a “slow curtain.” A line of description at the bottom
of the last page that sends the camera slowly back or tracking along
images for a few seconds, so the audience can catch its breath,
gather its thoughts, and leave the cinema with dignity.

PART 4

THE
WRITER
AT WORK

The first draft of anything is shit.
— Ernest Hemingway

U

THE PRINCIPLE
OF ANTAGONISM

In my experience, the principle of antagonism is the most impor¬
tant and least understood precept in story design. Neglect of this
fundamental concept is the primary reason screenplays and the
films made from them fail.

THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTAGONISM: A protagonist and
his story can only be as intellectually fascinating and
emotionally compelling as the forces of antagonism
make them.

Human nature is fundamentally conservative. We never do
more than we have to, expend any energy we don’t have to, take
any risks we don’t have to, change if we don’t have to. Why should
we? Why do anything the hard way if we can get what we want the
ease way? (The “easy way” is, of course, idiosyncratic and subjec¬
tive.) Therefore, what will cause a protagonist to become a fully
realized, multidimensional, and deeply empathetic character? What
will bring a dead screenplay to life? The answer to both questions
lies on the negative side of the story.

The more powerful and complex the forces of antagonism
opposing the character, the more completely realized character and
story must become. “Forces of antagonism” doesn’t necessarily refer to
a specific antagonist or villain. In appropriate genres arch-villains, like
the Terminator, are a delight, but by “forces of antagonism” we mean

317

318 * ROBERT MCKEE

the sum total of all forces that oppose the character’s will and desire.

If we study a protagonist at the moment of the Inciting Inci¬
dent and weigh the sum of his willpower along with his intellec¬
tual, emotional, social, and physical capacities against the total
forces of antagonism from within his humanity, plus his personal
conflicts, antagonistic institutions, and environment, we should
see clearly that he’s an underdog. He has a chance to achieve what
he wants—but only a chance. Although conflict from one aspect
of his life may seem solvable, the totality of all levels should seem
overwhelming as he begins his quest.

We pour energy into the negative side of a story not only to
bring the protagonist and other characters to full realization—roles
to challenge and attract the world’s finest actors—but to take the
story itself to the end of the line, to a brilliant and satisfying climax.

Following this principle, imagine writing for a super-hero.
How to turn Superman into an underdog? Kryptonite is a step in
the right direction, but not nearly enough. Look at the ingenious
design Mario Puzo created for the first SUPERMAN feature.

Puzo pits Superman (Christopher Reeve) against Lex Luthor
(Gene Hackman), who engineers a diabolical plot to launch two
nuclear rockets simultaneously in opposite directions, one aimed at
New Jersey, the other at California. Superman can’t be in two
places at once, so he’ll have to make the lesser-of-two-evils choice:
Which to save? New Jersey or California? He chooses New Jersey.

The second rocket hits the San Andreas Fault and starts an
earthquake that threatens to heave California into the ocean.
Superman dives into the fault and fuses California back to the con¬
tinent through the friction of his own body. But... the earthquake
kills Lois Lane (Margot Kidder).

Superman kneels in tears. Suddenly, the visage of Jor-El
(Marlon Brando) appears and says: “Thou shalt not interfere with
human destiny.” A dilemma of irreconcilable goods: his father’s
sacred rule versus the life of the woman he loves. He violates his
father’s law, flies around the Earth, reverses the spin of the planet,
turns back time, and resurrects Lois Lane—a happily-ever-after
fantasy, taking Superman from underdog to a virtual god.

THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTAGONISM 4 319

TAKING STORY AND CHARACTER TO THE END
OF THE LINE

Does your story contain negative forces of such power that the posi¬
tive side must gain surpassing quality? Below is a technique to
guide your self-critique and answer that critical question.

Begin by identifying the primary value at stake in your story.
For example, Justice. Generally, the protagonist will represent the
positive charge of this value; the forces of antagonism, the negative.
Life, however, is subtle and complex, rarely a case of yes/no,
good/evil, right/wrong. There are degrees of negativity.

First, the Contradictory value, the direct opposite of the positive.
In this case, Injustice. Laws have been broken.

JUSTICE

POSITIVE"*

v INJUSTICE
CONTRADICTORY

Between the Positive value and its Contradictory, however, is
the Contrary: a situation that’s somewhat negative but not fully the
opposite. The Contrary of justice is unfairness, a situation that’s
negative but not necessarily illegal: nepotism, racism, bureaucratic
delay, bias, inequities of all kinds. Perpetrators of unfairness may
not break the law, but they're neither just nor fair.

JUSTICE UNFAIRNESS

POSITIVE^* ^CONTRARY

^ INJUSTICE
CONTRADICTORY

The Contradictory, however, is not the limit of human experi¬
ence. At the end of the line waits the Negation of the Negation, a
force of antagonism that’s doubly negative.

320 + ROBERT MCKEE

Our subject is life, not arithmetic. In life two negatives don’t
make a positive. In English double negatives are ungrammatical,
but Italian uses double and even triple negatives so that a state¬
ment feels like its meaning. In anguish an Italian might say, “Non
ho niente mia!” (I don't have nothing never!). Italians know life.
Double negatives turn positive only in math and formal logic. In
life things just get worse and worse and worse.

A story that progresses to the limit of human experi¬
ence in depth and breadth of conflict must move
through a pattern that includes the Contrary, the Con¬
tradictory, and the Negation of the Negation.

(The positive mirror image of this negative declension runs
from Good to Better to Best to Perfect. But for mysterious reasons,
working with this progression is of no help to the storyteller.)

Negation of the Negation means a compound negative in
which a life situation turns not just quantitatively but qualitatively
worse. The Negation of the Negation is at the limit of the dark
powers of human nature. In terms of justice, this state is tyranny.
Or, in a phrase that applies to personal as well as social politics:
“Might Makes Right.”

JUSTICE

POSITIVE

UNFAIRNESS

CONTRARY

NEGATION
OF THE

NEGATION^ A INJUSTICE

TYRANNY^ CONTRADICTORY

Consider TV detective series: Do they go to the limit? The pro¬
tagonists of Spenser: For Hire, Quincy , Columbo, and Murder, She
Wrote represent justice and struggle to preserve this ideal. First,

THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTAGONISM + 321

they face unfairness: Bureaucrats won’t let Quincy do the autopsy,
a politician pulls strings to get Columbo off the case, Spenser’s
client lies to him. After struggling through gaps of expectation
powered by forces of unfairness, the cop discovers true injustice: A
crime has been committed. He defeats these forces and restores
society to justice. The forces of antagonism in most crime dramas
rarely reach beyond the Contradictory.

Compare this pattern to MISSING, a fact-based film about
American Ed Horman (Jack Lemmon), who searched Chile for a
son who disappeared during a coup d'etat. In Act One he meets
unfairness: The U.S. ambassador (Richard Venture) feeds him
half-truths, hoping to dissuade his search. But Horman perseveres.
At the Act Two Climax he uncovers a grievous injustice: The junta
murdered his son . . . with the complicity of the U.S. State Depart¬
ment and the CIA. Horman then tries to right this wrong, but in
Act Three he reaches the end of the line -—persecution without hope
of retribution.

Chile is in the grip of tyranny. The generals can make illegal on
Tuesday what you did legally on Monday, arrest you for it on
Wednesday, execute you on Thursday, and make it legal again
Friday morning. Justice does not exist; the tyrant makes it up at his
whim. MISSING is a searing revelation of the final limits of injus¬
tice . . . with irony: Although Horman couldn’t indict the tyrants in
Chile, he exposed them onscreen in front of the world—which
may be a sweeter kind of justice.

The Black Comedy . . . AND JUSTICE FOR ALL goes one step
further. It pursues justice full cycle back to the Positive. In Act One
attorney Arthur Kirkland (Al Pacino) struggles against unfairness:
the Baltimore Bar Association pressures him to inform against
other lawyers while a cruel judge (John Forsythe) uses red tape to
block the retrial of Kirkland’s innocent client. In Act Two he con¬
fronts injustice: The same judge is charged with brutally beating
and raping a woman.

But the judge has a scheme: It’s well known that the judge and
attorney hate each other. Indeed, the lawyer recently punched the
judge in public. So the judge will force this lawyer to represent him

322 4 ROBERT MCKEE

in court. When Kirkland appears to defend him, press and jury will
perceive the judge as innocent, believing that no lawyer who hates
a man would defend him unless he knew for certain that the
accused was innocent, and is there on principle. The lawyer tries to
escape this jam but hits the Negation of the Negation, a “legal”
tyranny of high-court judges who blackmail him to represent their
friend. If he doesn’t, they’ll expose a past indiscretion of his and
have him disbarred.

The lawyer, however, battles through unfairness, injustice, and
tyranny by breaking the law: He steps in front of the jury and
announces that his client “did it.” He knows that his client is the
rapist, he says, because his client told him. He destroys the judge
in public and wins justice for the victim. And although this stunt
ends the lawyer’s career, justice now shines like a diamond, for it
isn’t the momentary justice that comes when criminals are put
behind bars, but the grand justice that brings down tyrants.

The difference between the Contradictory and the Negation of
the Negation of justice is the difference between the relatively lim¬
ited and temporary power of those who break the law versus the
unlimited and enduring power of those who make the law. It’s the
difference between a world where law exists and a world where
might makes right. The absolute depth of injustice is not crimi¬
nality, but “legal” crimes committed by governments against their
own citizens.

Below are more examples to demonstrate how this declension
works in other stories and genres. First, love:

LOVE

INDIFFERENCE

positive"*

^ CONTRARY

NEGATION
OF THE
NEGATION

3 *

A CONTRADICTORY

SELF-HATE

HATE

THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTAGONISM * 323

To hate other people is bad enough, but even a misanthrope
loves one person. When self-love vanishes and a character loathes his
own being, he reaches the Negation of the Negation and existence
becomes a living hell: Raskolnikov in CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.

A second variation:

LOVE -* ► INDIFFERENCE

POSITIVE CONTRARY

NEGATION
OF THE

NEGATION A CONTRADICTORY

HATRED ** HATE

MASQUERADING
AS LOVE

With whom would you rather have a relationship? With
someone who hates you and honestly admits it, or with someone
you know hates you but pretends to love you? This is what lifts
ORDINARY PEOPLE and SHINE to the heights of Domestic
Drama. Many parents hate their children, many children hate their
parents, and they fight and scream and say it. In these fine films,
although a parent bitterly resents and secretly hates his or her
child, they pretend to love him. When the antagonist adds that lie,
the story moves to the Negation of the Negation. How can a child
defend himself against that?

324 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

When the primary value is truth:

TRUTH

POSITIVE

WHITE LIES/HALF-TRUTHS
CONTRARY

NEGATION
OF THE
NEGATION j

SELF-DECEPTION

\ CONTRADICTORY
“LIES

White lies are the Contrary because they’re often told to do
good: lovers waking up with pillow creases branded across their
faces, telling each other how beautiful they look. The blatant liar
knows the truth, then buries it to gain advantage. But when we
lie to ourselves and believe it, truth vanishes and we’re at the
Negation of the Negation: Blanche in A STREETCAR NAMED
DESIRE.

If the positive were Consciousness, being fully alive and aware:

CONSCIOUS NESS
POSITIVE i

UNCONSCIOUSNESS
^ CONTRARY

NEGATION
OF THE
NEGATION

DAMNATION

^ CONTRADICTORY

DEATH

This is the declension of Horror films in which the antagonist
is supernatural: DRACULA, ROSEMARY’S BABY. But we don’t
have to be religious to grasp the meaning of damnation. Whether or
not hell exists, this world provides its own Infernos, plights in
which death would be a mercy and we’d beg for it.

THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTAGONISM 4 3 2 5

Consider THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. Raymond Shaw
(Laurence Harvey) seems fully alive and aware. Then we learn that
he's been brainwashed by posthypnotic suggestion, a form of
unconsciousness. Under this power he commits a string of mur¬
ders, including that of his own wife, but does so with a degree of
innocence, for he's a pawn in a vicious conspiracy. But when he
recovers his mind and realizes what he’s done and what's been
done to him, he’s taken down to hell.

He learns he was brainwashed on the order of his incestuous,
power-mad mother, who’s using him in a plot to seize control of
the White House. Raymond could risk his life to expose his trai¬
torous mother or kill her. He chooses to kill, not only his mother
but his stepfather and himself as well, damning the three at once
in a shocking climax at the Negation of the Negation.

If the positive were wealth:

RICH

POSITIVE

NEGATION
OF THE
NEGATION

RICH BUT
SUFFERING THE
PAINS OF POVERTY

MIDDLE-CLASS

^CONTRARY

A CONTRADICTORY

POOR AND
SUFFERING THE
PAINS OF POVERTY

In WALL STREET Gekko feels impoverished because no
amount of money is enough. A billionaire, he acts as if he were a
starving thief, grasping for money at any illegal opportunity.

326 4 ROBERT MCKEE

If the positive were open communication between people:

COMMUNICATION ALIENATION

POSITIVE T ^CONTRARY

NEGATION
OF THE

NEGATION ,, + CONTRADICTORY

INSANITY ISOLATION

The Contrary has many varieties—silence, misunderstanding,
emotional blocks. The all-inclusive term “alienation” means a situa¬
tion of being with people, but feeling cut off and unable to fully
communicate. In isolation, however, there’s no one to talk to except
yourself. When you lose this and suffer a loss of communication
within your mind, you’re at the Negation of the Negation and
insane: Trelkovsky in THE TENANT.

Full achievement of ideals or goals:

SUCCESS

positive"*

COMPROMISE

^CONTRARY

NEGATION ;
OF THE
NEGATION

SELLING OUT

A CONTRADICTORY
FAILURE

Compromise means “settling for less,” the willingness to fall
short of your ideal but not surrender it completely. The Negation of
the Negation, however, is something people in show business have
to guard against. Thoughts such as: “I can’t make the fine films I’d
like to make . . . but there’s money in pornography”: THE SWEET
SMELL OF SUCCESS and MEPHISTO.

THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTAGONISM + 327

Intelligence:

WISDOM IGNORANCE

POSITIVE^* : ^CONTRARY

NEGATION
OF THE
NEGATION

stupidity"*

PERCEIVED AS
INTELLIGENCE

Ignorance is temporary stupidity due to a lack of information,
but stupidity is resolute, no matter how much information is given.
The Negation of the Negation cuts both ways: inwardly, when a
stupid person believes he’s intelligent, a conceit of numerous
comic characters, or outwardly, when society thinks a stupid
person is intelligent: BEING THERE.

Liberty:

FREEDOM
POSITIVE "*

NEGATION
OF THE
NEGATION

SLAVERY "*

PERCEIVED AS
FREEDOM

Restraint has many shades. Laws bind us but make civilization
possible, while imprisonment is fully negative, although society
finds it useful. The Negation of the Negation works two ways.
Inwardly: Self-enslavement is qualitatively worse than slavery. A
slave has his free will and would do all he could to escape. But to
corrode your willpower with drugs or alcohol and turn yourself into

A CONTRADICTORY
SLAVERY

RESTRAINT

^CONTRARY

A CONTRADICTORY
STUPIDITY

328 * ROBERT MCKEE

a slave is far worse. Outwardly: Slavery perceived as freedom impels
the novel and films 1984.

Courage:

BRAVERY FEAR

POSITIVE "V CONTRARY

NEGATION
OF THE
NEGATION

COWARDICE*

PERCEIVED AS
COURAGE

A courageous person can be temporarily stifled when fear
strikes, but eventually he acts. The coward does not. The end of the
line is reached, however, when a coward takes an action that out¬
wardly appears courageous: A battle rages around a foxhole. In it a
wounded officer turns to a coward and says: “Jack, your buddies are
running out of ammo. Take these boxes of shells through the
minefield or they’ll be overrun.” So the coward takes out his gun
. . . and shoots the officer. At first glance we might think it would
take courage to shoot an officer, but we’d soon realize that this was
an act at the sheer limit of cowardice.

In COMING HOME Captain Boy Hyde (Bruce Dern) shoots
himself in the leg to get out of Vietnam. Later, at the Crisis of his
subplot Hyde faces the lesser of two evils: life with its humilia¬
tion and pain versus death with its dread of the unknown. He
takes the easier path and drowns himself. Although some sui¬
cides are courageous, such as those of political prisoners on a
hunger strike, in most cases the suicide reaches the end of the line
and takes an action that may appear brave but lacks the courage
to live.

A CONTRADICTORY
COWARDICE

THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTAGONISM + 329

Loyalty:

LOYALTY SPLIT ALLEGIANCE

POSITIVE ^CONTRARY

NEGATION
OF THE

NEGATION A CONTRADICTORY

SELF-BETRAYAL^ BETRAYAL

Contrary: A married woman falls in love with another man, but
doesn’t act on it. Secretly, she feels loyalty to both men, but when
her husband learns of it, he sees her split allegiance as a betrayal.
She defends herself, arguing that she didn’t sleep with the other
man, so she was never disloyal. The difference between feeling and
action is often subjective.

In the mid-nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire was losing
its grip on Cyprus and the island was soon to fall to British rule. In
PASCALI’S ISLAND, Pascali (Ben Kingsley) spies for the Turkish
government, but he’s a frightened man whose bland reports go
unread. This lonely soul is befriended by a British couple (Charles
Dance and Helen Mirren) who offer him a happier life in England.
They’re the only people who have ever taken Pascali seriously, and
he’s drawn to them. Although they claim to be archaeologists, in
time he suspects they’re British spies (split allegiance) and betrays
them. Only when they’re killed does he discover they were antiq¬
uity thieves after an ancient statue. His betrayal tragically betrays
his own hopes and dreams.

330 + ROBERT MCKEE

Maturity:

MATURITY
POSITIVE **

NEGATION
OF THE

NEGATION ^ CONTRADICTORY

IMMATURITY ^ IMMATURITY

PERCEIVED

AS MATURITY

At the Inciting Incident of BIG the adolescent Josh Baskin
(David Moscow) is transformed into what appears to be a thirty-
two-year-old man (Tom Hanks). The film jumps immediately to
the Negation of the Negation, then explores the grays and blacks of
negativity. When Josh and his boss (Robert Loggia) tap dance on a
toy piano at F.A.O. Schwartz, this is childish, but more positive
than negative. When Josh and his coworker (John Heard) play
“keep away” on the handball court, this is perfectly childish. In fact,
we come to realize that the whole adult world is a playground full
of children playing corporate “keep away.”

At the Crisis Josh faces irreconcilable goods: an adult life with a
fulfilling career and the woman he loves versus a return to adoles¬
cence. He makes the mature choice to have his childhood,
expressing with a fine irony that he has at last become “big.” For he
and we sense that the key to maturity is to have had a complete
childhood. But because life has short-changed so many of us in
youth, we live, to one degree or another, at the Negation of the
Negation of maturity. BIG is a very wise film.

Lastly, consider a story in which the positive value is sanctioned
natural sex. Sanctioned meaning condoned by society; natural
meaning sex for procreation, attendant pleasure, and an expression
of love.

Under the Contrary falls acts of extramarital and premarital sex
that, although natural, are frowned on. Society often does more

CHILDISHNESS

^CONTRARY

THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTAGONISM + 331

SANCTIONED UNSANCTIONED/NATURAL

NATURAL SEX UNNATURAL/SANCTIONED

- ► _

POSITIVE CONTRARY

NEGATION
OF THE

NEGATION f 4 CONTRADICTORY

GROTESQUE/ UNNATURAL/

ABHORRENT UNSANCTIONED

than frown on prostitution, but it’s arguably natural. Bigamy,
polygamy, polyandry, and interracial and common-law marriage
are condoned in some societies, unsanctioned in others. Chastity is
arguably unnatural, but no one’s going to stop you from being celi¬
bate, while sex with someone who has taken a vow of celibacy, such
as a priest or a nun, is frowned on by the Church.

Under the Contradictory, humanity seems to know no limit of
invention: voyeurism, pornography, satyriasis, nymphomania,
fetishism, exhibitionism, frottage, transvestism, incest, rape,
pedophilia, and sadomasochism, to name only a few acts that are
unsanctioned and unnatural.

Homosexuality and bisexuality are difficult to place. In some soci¬
eties they’re thought natural, in others, unnatural. In many Western
countries homosexuality is sanctioned; in some Third World countries
it’s still a hanging offense. Many of these designations may seem arbi¬
trary, for sex is relative to social and personal perception.

But common perversions are not the end of the line. They’re
singular and committed, even with violence, with another human
being. When, however, the sexual object is from another species—
bestiality—or dead—necrophilia—or when compounds of perver¬
sities pile up, the mind revolts.

CHINATOWN: The end of the line of sanctioned natural sex is
not incest. It's only a Contradictory. In this film the Negation of the
Negation is incest with the offspring of your own incest. This is
why Evelyn Mulwray risks her life to keep her child from her

332 « ROBERT MCKEE

father. She knows he’s mad and will do it again. This is the motiva¬
tion for the murder. Cross killed his son-in-law because Mulwray
wouldn’t tell him where his daughter by his daughter was hiding.
This is what will happen after the Climax as Cross covers the terri¬
fied child’s eyes and pulls her away from her mother's horrific
death.

The principle of the Negation of the Negation applies not only
to the tragic but to the comic. The comic world is a chaotic, wild
place where actions must go to the limit. If not, the laughs falls flat.
Even the light entertainment of Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers films
touched the end of the line. They turned on the value of truth as
Fred Astaire traditionally played a character suffering from self-
deception, telling himself he was in love with the glitzy girl when
we knew that his heart really belonged to Ginger.

Fine writers have always understood that opposite values are
not the limit of human experience. If a story stops at the Contradic¬
tory value, or worse, the Contrary, it echoes the hundreds of medi¬
ocrities we suffer every year. For a story that is simply about
love/hate, truth/lie, freedom/slavery, courage/cowardice, and the
like is almost certain to be trivial. If a story does not reach the
Negation of the Negation, it may strike the audience as satisfying—
but never brilliant, never sublime.

All other factors of talent, craft, and knowledge being equal, great¬
ness is found in the writer’s treatment of the negative side.

If your story seems unsatisfying and lacking in some way, tools
are needed to penetrate its confusions and perceive its flaws. When
a story is weak, the inevitable cause is that forces of antagonism are
weak. Rather than spending your creativity trying to invent likable,
attractive aspects of protagonist and world, build the negative side
to create a chain reaction that pays off naturally and honestly on the
positive dimensions.

The first step is to question the values at stake and their pro¬
gression. What are the positive values? Which is preeminent and
turns the Story Climax? Do the forces of antagonism explore all
shades of negativity? Do they reach the power of the Negation of
the Negation at some point?

THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTAGONISM « 333

Generally, progressions run from the Positive to the Contrary
in Act One, to the Contradictory in later acts, and finally to the
Negation of the Negation in the last act, either ending tragically or
going back to the Positive with a profound difference. BIG, on the
other hand, leaps to the Negation of the Negation, then illuminates
all degrees of immaturity. CASABLANCA is even more radical. It
opens at the Negation of the Negation with Rick living in fascist
tyranny, suffering self-hatred and self-deception, then works to a
positive climax for all three values. Anything is possible, but the end
of the line must be reached.

EXPOSITION

SHOW, DON'T TELL

Exposition means facts—the information about setting, biography,
and characterization that the audience needs to know to follow and
comprehend the events of the story.

Within the first pages of a screenplay a reader can judge the
relative skill of the writer simply by noting how he handles exposi¬
tion. Well-done exposition doesn’t guarantee a superb story, but it
does tell us that the writer knows the craft. Skill in exposition
means making it invisible. As the story progresses, the audience
absorbs all it needs to know effortlessly, even unconsciously.

The famous axiom “Show, don’t tell” is the key. Never force
words into a character's mouth to tell the audience about world,
history, or person. Rather, show us honest, natural scenes in which
human beings talk and behave in honest, natural ways ... yet at
the same time indirectly pass along the necessary facts. In other
words, dramatize exposition.

Dramatized exposition serves two ends: Its primary purpose is
to further the immediate conflict. Its secondary purpose is to
convey information. The anxious novice reverses that order,
putting expositional duty ahead of dramatic necessity.

For example: Jack says, “Harry, how the hell long have we
known one another? What? About twenty years, huh? Ever since we
were at college together. That’s a long time, isn’t it, Harry? Well,
how the hell are ya this morning?" Those lines have no purpose

EXPOSITION * 335

except to tell the eavesdropping audience that Jack and Harry are
friends, went to school together twenty years ago, and they haven’t
had lunch yet—a deadly beat of unnatural behavior. No one ever
tells someone something they both already know unless saying the
obvious fills another and compelling need. Therefore, if this infor¬
mation is needed, the writer must create a motivation for the dia¬
logue that’s greater than the facts.

To dramatize exposition apply this mnemonic principle: Con¬
vert exposition to ammunition. Your characters know their world,
their history, each other, and themselves. Let them use what they
know as ammunition in their struggle to get what they want. Con¬
verting the above to ammunition: Jack, reacting to Harry’s stifled
yawn and bloodshot eyes, says, “Harry, look at you. The same
hippie haircut, still stoned by noon, the same juvenile stunts that
got you kicked out of school twenty years ago. Are you ever gonna
wake up and smell the coffee?" The audience’s eye jumps across
the screen to see Harry’s reaction and indirectly hears “twenty
years” and “school.”

“Show, don’t tell,” by the way, doesn’t mean that it’s all right to
pan the camera down a mantelpiece on a series of photographs that
take Harry and Jack from their university days to boot camp to the
double wedding to opening their dry cleaning business. That’s
telling, not showing. Asking the camera to do it turns a feature film
into a home movie. “Show, don’t tell” means that characters and
camera behave truthfully.

Dealing with the knotty problems of exposition so intimidates
some writers that they try to get it all out of the way as soon as pos¬
sible, so the studio script analyst can concentrate on their stories.
But when forced to wade through an Act One stuffed with exposi¬
tion, the reader realizes that this is an amateur who can’t handle
the basic craft, and skims to the last scenes.

Confident writers parse out exposition, bit by bit, through the
entire story, often revealing exposition well into the Climax of the
last act. They follow these two principles: Never include anything
the audience can reasonably and easily assume has happened.
Never pass on exposition unless the missing fact would cause con-

336 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

fusion. You do not keep the audience’s interest by giving it infor¬
mation, but by withholding information, except that which is
absolutely necessary for comprehension.

Pace the exposition. Like all else, exposition must have a pro¬
gressive pattern: Therefore, the least important facts come in early,
the next most important later, the critical facts last. And what are
the critical pieces of exposition? Secrets. The painful truths charac¬
ters do not want known.

In other words, don’t write “California scenes.” “California
scenes” are scenes in which two characters who hardly know each
other sit down over coffee and immediately begin an intimate discus¬
sion of the deep, dark secrets of their lives: “Oh, I had a rotten child¬
hood. To punish me my mother used to flush my head in the toilet.”
“Huh! You think you had a bad childhood. To punish me my father
put dog shit in my shoes and made me to go to school like that.”

Unguardedly honest and painful confessions between people
who have just met are forced and false. When this is pointed out to
writers, they will argue that it actually happens, that people share
very personal things with total strangers. And I agree. But only in
California. Not in Arizona, New York, London, Paris, or anywhere
else in the world.

A certain breed of West Coaster carries around prepared deep
dark secrets to share with one another at cocktail parties to validate
themselves one to the other as authentic Californians—“centered”
and “in touch with their inner beings.” When I’m standing over the
tortilla dip at such parties and somebody tells me about dog shit in
his Keds as a child, my thought is: “Wow! If that’s the prepared
deep dark secret he tells people over the guacamole, what’s the real
stuff?” For there’s always something else. Whatever is said hides
what cannot be said.

Evelyn Mulwray’s confession, “She’s my sister and my
daughter” is nothing she would share over cocktails. She tells
Gittes this to keep her child out of her father’s hands. “You can’t
kill me, Luke, I’m your father” is a truth Darth Vader never wanted
to tell his son, but if he doesn’t, he’ll have to kill or be killed by his
child.

EXPOSITION + 337

These are honest and powerful moments because the pressure of
life is squeezing these characters between the lesser of two evils. And
where in a well-crafted story is pressure the greatest? At the end of the
line. The wise writer, therefore, obeys the first principle of temporal
art: Save the best for last. For if we reveal too much too soon, the audi¬
ence will see the climaxes coming long before they arrive.

Reveal only that exposition the audience absolutely needs and wants
to know and no more.

On the other hand, since the writer controls the telling, he con¬
trols the need and desire to know. If at a certain point in the telling,
a piece of exposition must be known or the audience wouldn’t be
able to follow, create the desire to know by arousing curiosity. Put
the question “Why?” in the filmgoer's mind. “Why is this character
behaving this way? Why doesn't this or that happen? Why?” With a
hunger for information, even the most complicated set of drama¬
tized facts will pass smoothly into understanding.

One way to cope with biographical exposition is to start the
telling in the protagonist’s childhood and then work through all the
decades of his life. THE LAST EMPEROR, for example, covers over
sixty years in the life of Pu Yi (John Lone). The story strings
together scenes from his infancy when he’s made Emperor of
China, his teenage years and youthful marriage, his Western edu¬
cation, his fall into decadence, his years as a Japanese stooge, life
under the Communists, and his last days as a laborer in Peking's
Botanical Gardens. LITTLE BIG MAN spans a century. CARNAL
KNOWLEDGE, FAREWELL, MY CONCUBINE, and SHINE all
start in youth and leapfrog through the key events of the protago¬
nists’ lives into middle age or beyond.

However, as convenient as that design may be in terms of expo¬
sition, the vast majority of protagonists cannot be followed from
birth to death for this reason: Their story would have no Spine. To
tell a story that spans a lifetime a Spine of enormous power and
persistence must be created. But for most characters, what single,
deep desire, aroused out of an Inciting Incident in childhood,
would go unquenched for decades? This is why nearly all tellings
pursue the protagonist’s Spine over months, weeks, even hours.

33 8 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

If, however, an elastic, endurable Spine can be created, then a
story can be told over decades without being episodic. Episodic
does not mean “covering long stretches of time” but rather “spo¬
radic, irregular intervals.” A story told over twenty-four hours could
well be episodic if everything that happens in that day is uncon¬
nected to everything else that happens. On the other hand, LITTLE
BIG MAN is unified around a man's quest to prevent the genocide
of Native Americans by the whites—an atrocity that spanned gen¬
erations, therefore a century of storytelling. CARNAL KNOWL¬
EDGE is driven by a man’s blind need to humiliate and destroy
women, a soul-poisoning desire he never fathoms.

In THE LAST EMPEROR a man spends his life trying to
answer the question: Who am I? At age three Pu Yi is made
Emperor but has no idea what that means. To him a palace is a
playground. He clings to his childhood identity until as a teenager
he’s still nursing from the breast. The Imperial officials insist he
act like an emperor, but he then discovers there is no empire. Bur¬
dened with a false identity, he tries on one personality after another
but none fit: first English scholar and gentleman; then sex athlete
and hedonist; later international bon vivant doing Sinatra imita¬
tions at posh parties; next a statesman, only to end up a puppet to
the Japanese. Finally, the Communists give him his last identity—
gardener.

FAREWELL, MY CONCUBINE tells of Dieyi’s (Leslie Cheung)
fifty-year quest to live in the truth. When he is a child, the masters
of the Peking Opera ruthlessly beat, brainwash, and force him to
confess that he has a female nature—when he does not. If he did,
torture wouldn’t be necessary. He’s effeminate, but like many
effeminate men he is at heart male. So, forced to live a lie, he hates
all lies, personal and political. From that point on all the conflicts
in the story stem from his desire to speak the truth. But in China
only liars survive. Finally realizing that truth is an impossibility, he
takes his own life.

Because lifelong Spines are rare, we take Aristotle’s advice to
begin stories in medias res, “in the midst of things.” After locating
the date of the climactic event of the protagonist’s life, we begin

EXPOSITION ♦ 339

as close in time to it as possible. This design compresses the
telling’s duration, and lengthens the character’s biography before
the Inciting Incident. For example, if the Climax occurs on the
day a character turns thirty-five, instead of starting the film when
he’s a teenager, we open the film perhaps a month before his
birthday. This gives the protagonist thirty-five years of living to
build the maximum value into his existence. As a result, when his
life goes out of balance, he is now at risk and the story is filled
with conflict.

Consider, for example, the difficulties of writing a story about a
homeless alcoholic. What has he to lose? Virtually nothing. To a
soul enduring the unspeakable stress of the streets, death may be a
mercy, and a change in the weather might give him that. Lives with
little or no value beyond their existence are pathetic to witness, but
with so little at stake, the writer is reduced to painting a static por¬
trait of suffering.

Rather, we tell stories about people who have something to
lose—family, careers, ideals, opportunities, reputations, realistic
hopes and dreams. When such lives go out of balance, the charac¬
ters are placed at jeopardy. They stand to lose what they have in
their struggle to achieve a rebalancing of existence. Their battle,
risking hard-won values against the forces of antagonism, gener¬
ates conflict. And when story is thick with conflict, the characters
need all the ammunition they can get. As a result, the writer has
little trouble dramatizing exposition and facts flow naturally and
invisibly into the action. But when stories lack conflict, the writer is
forced into “table dusting."

Here, for example, is how many playwrights of the nineteenth
century handled exposition: The curtain comes up on a living room
set. Enter two domestics: One who’s worked there for the last thirty
years, the other the young maid just hired that morning. The older
maid turns to the newcomer and says, “Oh, you don’t know about
Dr. Johnson and his family, do you? Well, let me tell you . . .” And
as they dust the furniture the older maid lays out the entire life his¬
tory, world, and characterizations of the Johnson family. That’s
“table dusting," unmotivated exposition.

340 4 ROBERT MCKEE

And we still see it today.

OUTBREAK: In the opening sequence, Colonel Daniels
(Dustin Hoffman) flies to West Africa to halt an outbreak of the
Ebola virus. On board is a young medical assistant. Daniels turns
to him and says, in effect, “You don’t know about Ebola, do you?”
and lays out the pathology of the virus. If the young assistant is
untrained to fight a disease that threatens all human life on the
planet, what’s he doing on this mission? Any time you find your¬
self writing a line of dialogue in which one character is telling
another something that they both already know or should know,
ask yourself, is it dramatized? Is it exposition as ammunition? If
not, cut it.

If you can thoroughly dramatize exposition and make it invis¬
ible, if you can control its disclosure, parsing it out only when and
if the audience needs and wants to know it, saving the best for last,
you’re learning your craft. But what’s a problem for beginning
writers becomes an invaluable asset to those who know the craft.
Rather than avoiding exposition by giving their characters an
anonymous past, they go out of their way to salt their biographies
with significant events. Because what is the challenge that the sto¬
ryteller faces dozens of times over in the telling? How to turn the
scene. How to create Turning Points.

THE USE OF BACKSTORY

We can turn scenes only one of two ways: on action or on revelation.
There are no other means. If, for example, we have a couple in a posi¬
tive relationship, in love and together, and want to turn it to the
negative, in hate and apart, we could do it on action: She slaps him
across the face and says, “I’m not taking this anymore. It’s over.”
Or on revelation: He looks at her and says, “I’ve been having an
affair with your sister for the last three years. What are you going to
do about it?”

Powerful revelations come from the BACKSTORY—pre¬
vious significant events in the lives of the characters

EXPOSITION « 341

that the writer can reveal at critical moments to create
Turning Points.

CHINATOWN: “She’s my sister and my daughter” is exposi¬
tion, saved to create a stunning revelation that turns the second act
Climax and sets up a spiraling Act Three. THE EMPIRE STRIKES
BACK: “You can’t kill me, Luke, I’m your father” is exposition
from the Backstory of STAR WARS saved to create the greatest pos¬
sible effect, to turn the Climax and set up an entire new film,
RETURN OF THE fEDI.

Robert Towne could have exposed the Cross family incest early
in CHINATOWN by having Gittes unearth this fact from a disloyal
servant. George Lucas could have exposed Luke’s paternity by
having C3PO warn R2D2, “Don’t tell Luke, he’d really be upset to
hear this, but Darth's his dad.” Rather, they used Backstory exposi¬
tion to create explosive Turning Points that open the gap between
expectation and result, and deliver a rush of insight. With few
exceptions, scenes cannot be turned on nothing but action, action,
action. Inevitably we need a mix of action and revelation. Revela¬
tions, in fact, tend to have more impact, and so we often reserve
them for the major Turning Points, act climaxes.

FLASHBACKS

Th e flashback is simply another form of exposition. Like all else, it’s
done either well or ill. In other words, rather than boring the audi¬
ence with long, unmotivated, exposition-filled dialogue passages,
we could bore it with unwanted, dull, fact-filled flashbacks. Or we
do it well. A flashback can work wonders if we follow the fine prin¬
ciples of conventional exposition.

First, dramatize flashbacks.

Rather than flashing back to flat scenes in the past, interpolate
a minidrama into the story with its own Inciting Incident, progres¬
sions, and Turning Point. Although producers often claim that

342 + ROBERT MCKEE

flashbacks slow a film's pace, and indeed badly done they do, a
well-done flashback actually accelerates pace.

CASABLANCA: The Paris Flashback comes at the opening of
Act Two. Rick is crying in his whiskey, drunk and depressed, the
film's rhythm deliberately retarding to relieve the tension of the Act
One Climax. But as Rick remembers his affair with lisa, the flash¬
back to the tale of their love affair while the Nazis invade Paris
sweeps the film into an ever swifter pace that peaks around a
sequence Climax as lisa runs out on Rick.

RESERVOIR DOGS: The Inciting Incident of a Murder Mystery
combines two events: A murder is committed; the protagonist dis¬
covers the crime. Agatha Christie, however, opens her stories with
only the second half—a closet door opens and a body falls out. By
starting with the discovery of the crime, she arouses curiosity in
two directions: Into the past, how and why was the murder com¬
mitted? Into the future, which of the many suspects did it?

Tarantino’s design simply reworks Agatha Christie. After intro¬
ducing his characters, Tarantino launched the film by skipping
over the first half of the Inciting Incident—the botched heist—and
cut immediately to the second half—the getaway. With one of the
thieves wounded in the backseat of the getaway car we instantly
realize the robbery has gone bad and our curiosity runs into the
past and future. What went wrong? How will it turn out? Having
created the need and desire to know both answers, whenever pace
in the warehouse scenes flagged, Tarantino flashed back to the
high-speed action of the heist. A simple idea, but no one had ever
done it with such daring, and what could have been a less than
energetic film had solid pace.

Second, do not bring in a flashback until you have cre¬
ated in the audience the need and desire to know.

CASABLANCA: The Act One Climax is also the Central Plot’s
Inciting Incident as lisa suddenly reappears in Rick’s life and they
share a powerful exchange of looks over Sam’s piano. There follows
a scene of cocktail chat, double entendres, and subtext that hint at a

EXPOSITION + 343

past relationship and a passion still very much alive. As Act Two
opens, the audience is burning with curiosity, wondering what
went on between these two in Paris. Then and only then, when the
audience needs and wants to know, do the writers flash back.

We must realize that a screenplay is not a novel. Novelists can
directly invade the thoughts and feelings of characters. We cannot.
Novelists, therefore, can indulge the luxury of free association. We
cannot. The prose writer can, if he wishes, walk a character past a
shop window, have him look inside and remember his entire child¬
hood: “He was walking through his hometown that afternoon when
he glanced over at the barbershop and remembered the days when
his father would take him there as a boy and he'd sit among the old-
timers as they smoked cigars and talked about baseball. It was there
that he first heard the word ‘sex' and ever since he's unable to sleep
with a woman without thinking he was hitting a home run.”

Exposition in prose is relatively easy, but the camera is an X-ray
machine for all things false. If we try to force exposition into a film
through novel-like free associative editing or semisubliminal flutter
cuts that “glimpse” a character's thoughts, it strikes us as contrived.

DREAM SEQUENCES

The Dream Sequence is exposition in a ball gown. Everything said
above applies doubly to these usually feeble efforts to disguise
information in Freudian cliches. One of the few effective uses of a
dream opens Ingmar Bergman's WILD STRAWBERRIES.

MONTAGE

In the American use of this term, a montage is a series of rapidly
cut images that radically condenses or expands time and often
employs optical effects such as wipes, irises, split screens, dis¬
solves, or other multiple images. The high energy of such
sequences is used to mask their purpose: the rather mundane task
of conveying information. Like the Dream Sequence, the montage

344 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

is an effort to make undramatized exposition less boring by
keeping the audience’s eye busy. With few exceptions, montages
are a lazy attempt to substitute decorative photography and editing
for dramatization and are, therefore, to be avoided.

VOICE-OVER NARRATION

Voice-over narration is yet another way to divulge exposition. Like
the Flashback, it’s done well or ill. The test of narration is this: Ask
yourself, “If I were to strip the voice-over out of my screenplay,
would the story still be well told?” If the answer is yes . . . keep it
in. Generally, the principle “Less is more" applies: the more eco¬
nomical the technique, the more impact it has. Therefore, anything
that can be cut should be cut. There are, however, exceptions. If
narration can be removed and the story still stands on its feet well
told, then you’ve probably used narration for the only good
reason—as counterpoint.

Counterpoint narration is Woody Allen’s great gift. If we were
to cut the voice-over from HANNAH AND HER SISTERS or HUS¬
BANDS AND WIVES his stories would still be lucid and effective.
But why would we? His narration offers wit, ironies, and insights
that can’t be done any other way. Voice-over to add nonnarrative
counterpoint can be delightful.

Occasionally, brief telling narration, especially at the opening
or during transitions between acts, such as in BARRY LYNDON, is
inoffensive, but the trend toward using telling narration throughout a
film threatens the fixture of our art. More and more films by some of
the finest directors from Hollywood and Europe indulge in this
indolent practice. They saturate the screen with lush photography
and lavish production values, then tie images together with a voice
droning on the soundtrack, turning the cinema into what was once
known as Classic Comic Books.

Many of us were first exposed to the works of major writers
by reading Classic Comics, novels in cartoon images with captions
that told the story. That’s fine for children, but it’s not cinema.
The art of cinema connects Image A via editing, camera, or lens

EXPOSITION ♦ 345

movement with Image B, and the effect is meanings C, D, and E,
expressed without explanation. Recently, film after film slides a
steady-cam through rooms and corridors, up and down streets,
panning sets and cast while a narrator talks, talks, talks voice¬
over, telling us about a character’s upbringing, or his dreams and
fears, or explaining the politics of the story’s society—until the
film becomes little more than multimillion-dollar books-on-tape,
illustrated.

It takes little talent and less effort to fill a soundtrack with
explanation. “Show, don’t tell” is a call for artistry and discipline, a
warning to us not to give in to laziness but to set creative limitations
that demand the fullest use of imagination and sweat. Dramatizing
every turn into a natural, seamless flow of scenes is hard work, but
when we allow ourselves the comfort of “on the nose” narration we
gut our creativity, eliminate the audience’s curiosity, and destroy
narrative drive.

More importantly, “Show, don't tell” means respect the intelli¬
gence and sensitivity of your audience. Invite them to bring their
best selves to the ritual, to watch, think, feel, and draw their own
conclusions. Do not put them on your knee as if they were children
and “explain” life, for the misuse and overuse of narration is not
only slack, it’s patronizing. And if the trend toward it continues,
cinema will degrade into adulterated novels and our art will shrivel.

To study the skillful design of exposition, I suggest a close
analysis of JFK. Obtain Oliver Stone’s screenplay and/or the video
and break the film down, scene by scene, listing all the facts, indis¬
putable or alleged, it contains. Then note how Stone splintered this
Mount Everest of information into its vital pieces, dramatized each
bit, pacing the progression of revelations. It is a masterpiece of
craftsmanship.

16

PROBLEMS
AND SOLUTIONS

This chapter examines eight enduring problems, from how to hold
interest, to how to adapt from other media, to how to cope with
holes in logic. For each problem the craft provides solutions.

THE PROBLEM OF INTEREST

Marketing may entice an audience into the theatre, but once the
ritual begins, it needs compelling reasons to stay involved. A story
must capture interest, hold it unswervingly through time, then
reward it at Climax. This task is next to impossible unless the
design attracts both sides of human nature—intellect and emotion.

Curiosity is the intellectual need to answer questions and close
open patterns. Story plays to this universal desire by doing the
opposite, posing questions and opening situations. Each Turning
Point hooks curiosity. As the protagonist is put at increasingly
greater risk, the audience wonders, “What’s going to happen next?
And after that?” And above all, “How will it turn out?” The answer
to this will not arrive until the last act Climax, and so the audience,
held by curiosity, stays put. Think of all the bad films you’ve sat
through for no other reason than to get the answer to that nagging
question. We may make the audience cry or laugh, but above all, as
Charles Reade noted, we make it wait.

Concern, on the other hand, is the emotional need for the posi¬
tive values of life: justice, strength, survival, love, truth, courage.

346

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS + 347

Human nature is instinctively repelled by what it perceives as nega¬
tive, while drawn powerfully toward positive.

As a story opens, the audience, consciously or instinctively,
inspects the value-charged landscape of world and characters,
trying to separate good from evil, right from wrong, things of value
from things of no value. It seeks the Center of Good. Once finding
this core, emotions flow to it.

The reason we search for the Center of Good is that each of us
believes that we are good or right and want to identify with the pos¬
itive. Deep inside we know we're flawed, perhaps seriously so, even
criminal, but somehow we feel that despite that, our heart is in the
right place. The worst of people believe themselves good. Hitler
thought he was the savior of Europe.

I once joined a gym in Manhattan not knowing it was a mafia
hangout and met an amusing, likable guy whose nickname was
Mr. Coney Island, a title he’d won as a bodybuilder in his teens.
Now, however, he was a “button man.” “To button up” means to
shut up. A button man “puts the button on” or shuts people up . . .
forever. One day in the steam room he sat down and said, “Hey,
Bob, tell me something. Are you one of the ‘good’ people?” In other
words, did I belong to the mob?

Mafia logic runs like this: “People want prostitution, narcotics,
and illicit gambling. When they’re in trouble, they want to bribe
police and judges. They want to taste the fruits of crime, but they’re
lying hypocrites and won’t admit it. We provide these services but
we’re not hypocrites. We deal in realities. We are the ‘good’
people.” Mr. Coney Island was a conscienceless assassin, but inside
he was convinced he was good.

No matter who’s in the audience, each seeks the Center of Good,
the positive focus for empathy and emotional interest.

At the very least the Center of Good must be located in the pro¬
tagonist. Others may share it, for we can empathize with any
number of characters, but we must empathize with the protagonist.
On the other hand, the Center of Good doesn’t imply “niceness.”
“Good” is defined as much by what it’s not as by what it is. From
the audience’s point of view, “good” is a judgment made in rela-

348 4 ROBERT MCKEE

tionship to or against a background of negativity, a universe that’s
thought or felt to be “not good.”

THE GODFATHER; Not only is the Corleone family corrupt,
but so too are the other mafia families, even the police and judges.
Everyone in this film is a criminal or related to one. But the Cor-
leones have one positive quality—loyalty. In other mob clans gang¬
sters stab one another in the back. That makes them the bad bad
guys. The loyalty of the Godfather’s family makes them the good
bad guys. When we spot this positive quality, our emotions move
toward it and we find ourselves in empathy with gangsters.

How far can we take the Center of Good? With what kind of
monsters will an audience empathize?

WHITE HEAT; Cody Jarrett (James Cagney), the film’s Center
of Good, is a psychopathic killer. But the writers design a masterful
balancing act of negative/positive energies by first giving Jarrett
attractive qualities, then landscaping around him a grim, fatalistic
world: His is a gang of weak-willed yes-men, but he has leadership
capacities. He’s pursued by an FBI squad of lackluster dullards,
whereas he’s witty and imaginative. His “best friend” is an FBI
informant, while Cody's friendship is genuine. No one shows affec¬
tion for anyone in this film, except Cody, who adores his mother.
This moral management draws the audience into empathy, feeling,
"If I had to lead a life of crime, I’d want to be like Cody Jarrett.”

THE NIGHT PORTER: In a Backstory of dramatized flash¬
backs, protagonists and lovers (Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Ram¬
pling) met in this fashion: He was the sadistic commandant of a
Nazi death camp, she a teenage prisoner of masochistic nature.
Their passionate affair lasted for years inside the death camp. With
the war’s end, they went their separate ways. The film opens in
1957 as they eye each other in the lobby of a Viennese hotel. He’s
now a hotel porter, she a guest traveling with her concert pianist
husband. Once up in their room she tells her husband she’s ill,
sends him on ahead to his concert, then stays behind to resume
her affair with her former lover. This couple is the Center of Good.

Writer/director Liliana Cavani manages this feat by encircling
the lovers with a depraved society of malevolent SS officers in

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS + 349

hiding. Then she lights one little candle to blaze at the heart of this
cold, dark world: Despite how the lovers met and the nature of
their passion, in the deepest and truest sense, their love is real.
What’s more, it’s tested to the limit. When SS officers tell their
friend he must kill the woman because she may expose them, he
replies, “No, she’s my baby, she’s my baby.” He’d sacrifice his life
for his lover and she for him. We feel a tragic loss when at Climax
they choose to die together.

SILENCE OF THE LAMBS: The writers of novel and screen¬
play place Clarice (Jodie Foster) at the positive focal point, but also
shape a second Center of Good around Hannibal Lecter (Anthony
Hopkins) and draw empathy to both. First, they assign Dr. Lecter
admirable and desirable qualities: massive intelligence, a sharp wit
and sense of irony, gentlemanly charm, and most importantly,
calmness. How, we wondered, could someone who lives in such a
hellish world remain so poised and polite?

Next, to counterpoint these qualities the writers surround Lecter
with a brutish, cynical society. His prison psychiatrist is a sadist and
publicity hound. His guards are dimwits. Even the FBI, which wants
Lecter’s help on a baffling case, lies to him, trying to manipulate him
with false promises of an open-air prison on a Carolina island. Soon
we’re rationalizing: “So he eats people. There are worse things. Off¬
hand I can’t think what, but. . . We fall into empathy, musing, "If I
were a cannibalistic psychopath, I'd want to be just like Lecter.”

Mystery, Suspense, Dramatic Irony

Curiosity and Concern create three possible ways to connect the
audience to the story: Mystery, Suspense, and Dramatic Irony. These
terms are not to be mistaken for genres; they name story/audience
relationships that vary according to how we hold interest.

In Mystery the audience knows less than the characters.

Mystery means gaining interest through curiosity alone. We
create but then conceal expositional facts, particularly facts in the

350 4 ROBERT MCKEE

Backstory. We arouse the audience’s curiosity about these past
events, tease it with hints of the truth, then deliberately keep it in
the dark by misleading it with “red herrings,” so that it believes or
suspects false facts while we hide the real facts.

“Red herrings” has an amusing etymology: As peasant poachers
of deer and grouse made off with their booty through medieval
forests, they would drag a fish, a red herring, across the trail to con¬
fuse the lord of the manor’s bloodhounds.

This technique of compelling interest by devising a guessing
game of red herrings and suspects, of confusion and curiosity,
pleases the audience of one and only one genre, the Murder
Mystery, which has two subgenres, the Closed Mystery and the Open-
Mystery.

The Closed Mystery is the Agatha Christie form in which a
murder is committed unseen in the Backstory. The primary con¬
vention of the “Who done it?” is multiple suspects. The writer must
develop at least three possible killers to constantly mislead the
audience to suspect the wrong person, the red herring, while with¬
holding the identity of the real killer to Climax.

The Open Mystery is the Columbo form in which the audience
sees the murder committed and therefore knows who did it. The
story becomes a “How will he catch him?” as the writer substitutes
multiple clues for multiple suspects. The murder must be an elabo¬
rate and seemingly perfect crime, a complex scheme involving a
number of steps and technical elements. But the audience knows
by convention that one of these elements is a fatal flaw of logic.
When the detective arrives on the scene he instinctively knows who
did it, sifts through the many clues searching for the telltale flaw,
discovers it, and confronts the arrogant perfect-crime-committer,
who then spontaneously confesses.

In the Mystery form the killer and detective know the facts long
before Climax but keep it to themselves. The audience runs from
behind trying to figure out what the key characters already know.
Of course, if we could win the race, we'd feel like losers. We try
hard to guess the who or how, but we want the writer’s master
detective to be just that.

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS + 3 51

These two pure designs may be mixed or satirized. CHINA¬
TOWN starts Closed but then turns Open at the Act Two Climax. THE
USUAL SUSPECTS parodies the Closed Mystery. It starts as a “Who
done it?” but becomes a “Nobody done it”. . . whatever “it” may be.

In Suspense the audience and characters know the

same information.

Suspense combines both Curiosity and Concern. Ninety percent
of all films, comedy and drama, compel interest in this mode. In
Suspense, however, curiosity is not about fact but outcome. The out¬
come of a Murder Mystery is always certain. Although we don’t know
who or how, the detective will catch the killer and the story will end
“up.” But the Suspense story could end “up” or “down” or in irony.

Characters and audience move shoulder to shoulder through
the telling, sharing the same knowledge. As the characters discover
expositional fact, the audience discovers it. But what no one knows
is “How will this turn out?” In this relationship we feel empathy
and identify with the protagonist, whereas in pure Mystery our
involvement is limited to sympathy. Master detectives are charming
and likable, but we never identify with them because they’re too
perfect and never in real jeopardy. Murder Mysteries are like board
games, cool entertainments for the mind.

In Dramatic Irony the audience knows more than the

characters.

Dramatic Irony creates interest primarily through concern
alone, eliminating curiosity about fact and consequence. Such sto¬
ries often open with the ending, deliberately giving away the out¬
come. When the audience is given the godlike superiority of
knowing events before they happen, its emotional experience
switches. What in Suspense would be anxiety about outcome and
fear for the protagonist’s well-being, in Dramatic Irony becomes
dread of the moment the character discovers what we already know
and compassion for someone we see heading for disaster.

352 4 ROBERT MCKEE

SUNSET BOULEVARD: In the first sequence the body of Joe
Gillis (William Holden) floats facedown in Norma Desmond’s
(Gloria Swanson) swimming pool. The camera goes to the bottom of
the pool, looks up at the corpse, and in voice-over Gillis muses that
we’re probably wondering how he ended up dead in a swimming
pool, so he’ll tell us. The film becomes a feature-length flashback,
dramatizing a screenwriter's struggle for success. We’re moved to
compassion and dread as we watch this poor man heading toward a
fate we already know. We realize that all of Gillis's efforts to escape
the clutches of a wealthy harridan and write an honest screenplay will
come to nothing and he’ll end up a corpse in her swimming pool.

BETRAYAL: The Antiplot device of telling a story in reverse
order from end to beginning was invented in 1934 by Phillip
Kaufman and Moss Hart for their play Merrily We Roll Along. Forty
years later Harold Pinter used this idea to exploit the ultimate use
of Dramatic Irony. BETRAYAL is a Love Story that opens with
former lovers, Jerry and Emma (Jeremy Irons and Patricia Hodge)
meeting privately for the first time in the years since their breakup.
In a tense moment she confesses that her husband “knows,” her
husband being Jerry’s best friend. As the film proceeds it flashes
back to scenes of the breakup, then follows with the events that
brought about the breakup, back farther to cover the golden days of
the romance, then ends on boy-meets-girl. As the eyes of the young
lovers glitter with anticipation, we’re filled with mixed emotions:
We want them to have their affair, for it was sweet, but we also
know all the bitterness and pain they’ll suffer.

Placing the audience in the position of Dramatic Irony does not
eliminate all curiosity. The result of showing the audience what will
happen is to cause them to ask, “How and why did these characters
do what I already know they did? Dramatic Irony encourages the
audience to look more deeply into the motivations and causal forces
at work in the characters’ lives. This is why we often enjoy a fine film
more, or at least differently, on second viewing. We not only flex the
often underused emotions of compassion and dread, but freed from
curiosity about facts and outcome, we now concentrate on inner
lives, unconscious energies, and the subtle workings of society.

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS + 353

However, the majority of genres do not lend themselves to
either pure Mystery or pure Dramatic Irony. Instead, within the
Suspense relationship writers enrich the telling by mixing the
other two. In an overall Suspense design, some sequences may
employ Mystery to increase curiosity about certain facts, others
may switch to Dramatic Irony to touch the audience's heart.

CASABLANCA: At the end of Act One we learn that Rick and
lisa had an affair in Paris that ended in breakup. Act Two opens
with a flashback to Paris. From the vantage of Dramatic Irony, we
watch the young lovers head for tragedy and feel a special tender¬
ness for their romantic innocence. We look deeply into their
moments together, wondering why their love ended in heartbreak
and how they’ll react when they discover what we already know.

Later, at the climax of Act Two, lisa is back in Rick’s arms,
ready to leave her husband for him. Act Three switches to Mystery
by showing Rick make his Crisis decision but not letting us in on
what he's chosen to do. Because Rick knows more than we,
curiosity is piqued: Will he run off with lisa? When the answer
arrives, it hits us with a jolt.

Suppose you were working on a Thriller about a psychopathic
axe murderer and a female detective, and you're ready to write the
Story Climax. You’ve set it in the dimly lit corridor of an old man¬
sion. She knows the killer is near and clicks the safety off her gun
as she moves slowly past doors left and right extending into the
dark distance. Which of the three strategies to use?

Mystery: Hide a fact known to the antagonist from the audience.

Close all the doors so that as she moves down the hall the audi¬
ence’s eyes search the screen, wondering, Where is he? Behind the
first door? The next door? The next? Then he attacks by crashing
through . . . the ceiling!

Suspense: Give the audience and characters the same informa¬
tion.

At the end of the hall a door is ajar with a light behind it casting
a shadow on the wall of a man holding an axe. She sees the shadow
and stops. The shadow retreats from the wall. CUT TO: Behind the
door a man, axe in hand, waits: He knows that she’s there and he

354 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

knows that she knows that he's there because he heard her foot¬
steps stop. CUT TO: The hallway where she hesitates: She knows
that he’s there and she knows that he knows that she knows that
he’s there because she saw his shadow move. We know that she
knows that he knows, but what no one knows is how will this turn
out? Will she kill him? Or will he kill her?

Dramatic Irony: Employ Hitchcock’s favorite device and hide
from the protagonist a fact known to the audience.

She slowly edges toward a closed door at the end of the hall.

CUT TO: Behind the door a man waits, axe in hand. CUT TO:
The hallway as she moves closer and closer to the closed door. The
audience, knowing what she doesn't know, switches its emotions
from anxiety to dread: “Don’t go near that door! For God's sake,
don’t open that door! He’s behind the door! Look out!”

She opens the door and .. . mayhem.

On the other hand, if she were to open the door and embrace
the man... .

MAN WITH AXE
(rubbing sore
muscles)

Honey, I’ve been chopping
wood all afternoon.

Is dinner ready?

. . . this would not be Dramatic Irony, but False Mystery and its
dim-witted cousin, Cheap Surprise.

A certain amount of audience curiosity is essential. Without it,
Narrative Drive grinds to a halt. The craft gives you the power to
conceal fact or outcome in order to keep the audience looking
ahead and asking questions. It gives you the power to mystify the
audience, if that’s appropriate. But you must not abuse this power.
If so, the audience, in frustration, will tune out. Instead, reward the
filmgoer for his concentration with honest, insightful answers to
his questions. No dirty tricks, no Cheap Surprise, no False Mystery.

False Mystery is a counterfeit curiosity caused by the artificial
concealment of fact. Exposition that could and should have been

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS + 355

given to the audience is withheld in hope of holding interest over
long, undramatized passages.

FADE IN: The pilot of a crowded airliner battles an electrical
storm. Lightning strikes the wing and the plane plunges toward a
mountainside. CUT TO: Six months earlier, and a thirty-minute flash¬
back that tediously details the lives of the passengers and crew leading
up to the fatal flight. This tease or cliff-hanger is a lame promise made
by the writer: “Don't worry, folks, if you stick with me through this
boring stretch, I’ll eventually get back to the exciting stuff.”

THE PROBLEM OF SURPRISE

We go to the storyteller with a prayer: “Please, let it be good. Let it
give me an experience I’ve never had, insights into a fresh truth.
Let me laugh at something I’ve never thought funny. Let me be
moved by something that’s never touched me before. Let me see
the world in a new way. Amen.” In other words, the audience prays
for surprise, the reversal of expectation.

As characters arrive onscreen, the audience surrounds them
with expectations, feeling “this” will happen, “that” will change,
Miss A will get the money, Mr. B will get the girl, Mrs. C will
suffer. If what the audience expects to happen happens, or worse, if
it happens the way the audience expects it to happen, this will be a
very unhappy audience. We must surprise them.

There are two kinds of surprise: cheap and true. True surprise
springs from the sudden revelation of the Gap between expectation
and result. This surprise is “true” because it’s followed by a rush of
insight, the revelation of a truth hidden beneath the surface of the
fictional world.

Cheap Surprise takes advantage of the audience’s vulnerability.
As it sits in the dark, the audience places its emotions in the story¬
teller’s hands. We can always shock filmgoers by smash cutting to
something it doesn’t expect to see or away from something it expects
to continue. By suddenly and inexplicably breaking the narrative flow
we can always jolt people. But as Aristoltle complained, “To be about
to act and not to act is the worst. It is shocking without being tragic.”

356 4 ROBERT MCKEE

In certain genres— Horror, Fantasy, Thriller —cheap surprise is
a convention and part of the fun: The hero walks down a dark alley.
A hand shoots in from the edge of the screen and grabs his
shoulder, the hero spins around—and it's his best friend. Outside
these genres, however, cheap surprise is a shoddy device.

MY FAVORITE SEASON: A woman (Catherine Deneuve) is
married but not happily. Her possessive brother agitates his sister's
marriage, until finally convinced she cannot be happy with her hus¬
band, she leaves and moves in with her brother. Brother and sister
share a top-floor apartment. He comes home one day feeling
uncertain qualms. As he enters, he sees a window open, curtains
billowing. He rushes to look down. In his POV we see his sister
smashed on the cobbles far below, dead, surrounded by a pool of
blood. CUT TO: The bedroom and his sister waking up from a nap.

Why, in a serious Domestic Drama, would a director resort to
horrific shock images from the brother's nervous imagination?
Perhaps because the previous thirty minutes were so unbearably
boring, he thought it was time to kick us in the shins with a trick
he learned in film school.

THE PROBLEM OF COINCIDENCE

Story creates meaning. Coincidence, then, would seem our enemy, for
it is the random, absurd collisions of things in the universe and is, by
definition, meaningless. And yet coincidence is a part of life, often a
powerful part, rocking existence, then vanishing as absurdly as it
arrived. The solution, therefore, is not to avoid coincidence, but to dra¬
matize how it may enter life meaninglessly, but in time gain meaning,
how the antilogic of randomness becomes the logic of life-as-lived.

First, bring coincidence in early to allow time to build

meaning out of it.

The Inciting Incident of JAWS: a shark, by random chance,
eats a swimmer. But once in the story the shark doesn't leave. It
stays and gathers meaning as it continuously menaces the innocent

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS + 357

until we get the feeling that the beast is doing it on purpose and,
what’s more, enjoying it. Which is the definition of evil: Doing
harm to others and taking pleasure in it. We all hurt people inad¬
vertently but instantly regret it. But when someone purposely seeks
to cause pain in others and takes pleasure from it, that’s evil. The
shark then becomes a powerful icon for the dark side of nature that
would love to swallow us whole and laugh while doing it.

Coincidence, therefore, must not pop into a story, turn a scene,
then pop out. Example: Eric desperately seeks his estranged lover,
Laura, but she’s moved. After searching in vain, he stops for a beer.
On the stool next to him sits the real estate agent who sold Laura
her new house. He gives Eric her exact address. Eric leaves with
thanks and never sees the salesman again. Not that this coinci¬
dence couldn’t happen, but it’s pointless.

On the other hand, suppose that the salesman can’t remember
the address, but does recall that Laura bought a red Italian sports
car at the same time. The two men leave together and spot her
Maserati on the street. Now they both go up to her door. Still angry
with Eric, Laura invites them in and flirts with the salesman to
annoy her ex-lover. What was meaningless good luck now becomes
a force of antagonism to Eric's desire. This triangle could build
meaningfully through the rest of the story.

As a rule of thumb do not use coincidence beyond the mid¬
point of the telling. Rather, put the story more and more into the
hands of the characters.

Second, never use coincidence to turn an ending. This

is deus ex machina, the writer's greatest sin.

Deus ex machina is a Latin phrase taken from the classical the¬
atres of Greece and Rome, meaning “god from machine.” From
500 b.c. to a.d. 500 theatre flourished throughout the Mediter¬
ranean. Over those centuries hundreds of playwrights wrote for
these stages but only seven have been remembered, the rest merci¬
fully forgotten, due primarily to their propensity to use deus ex
machina to get out of story problems. Aristotle complained about

358 « ROBERT MCKEE

this practice, sounding much like a Hollywood producer: “Why
can't these writers come up with endings that work?”

In these superb, acoustically perfect amphitheatres, some
seating up to ten thousand people, at the far end of a horseshoe¬
shaped stage was a high wall. At the bottom were doors or arches
for entrances and exits. But actors who portrayed gods would be
lowered down to the stage from the top of the wall standing on a
platform attached to ropes and pulley. This “god from machine”
device was the visual analogy of the deities coming down from
Mount Olympus and going back up to Mount Olympus.

Story climaxes were as difficult twenty-five hundred years ago
as now. But ancient playwrights had a way out. They would cook a
story, twist Turning Points until they had the audience on the edge
of their marble seats, then if the playwright’s creativity dried up
and he was lost for a true Climax, convention allowed him to dodge
the problem by cranking a god to the stage and letting an Apollo or
Athena settle everything. Who lives, who dies, who marries who,
who is damned for eternity. And they did this over and over.

Nothing has changed in twenty-five hundred years. Writers
today still cook up stories they can’t end. But instead of dropping a
god in to get an ending, they use “acts of god”—the hurricane that
saves the lovers in HURRICANE, the elephant stampede that
resolves the love triangle in ELEPHANT WALK, the traffic acci¬
dents that end THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE and
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, the T-Rex that hops
in just in time to devour the velociraptors in JURASSIC PARK.

Deus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, it’s
an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act,
for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives. No one
and nothing coincidental will come along to take that responsibility
from us, regardless of the injustices and chaos around us. You could
be locked in a cell for the rest of your life for a crime you did not
commit. But every morning you would still have to get up and make
meaning. Do I bludgeon my brains against this wall or do I find
some way to get through my days with value? Our lives are ultimately
in our own hands. Deus ex machina is an insult because it is a lie.

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS + 359

The one exception is Antistructure films that substitute coinci¬
dence for causality: WEEKEND, CHOOSE ME, STRANGERS IN
PARADISE, and AFTER HOURS begin by coincidence, progress
by coincidence, end on coincidence. When coincidence rules story,
it creates a new and rather significant meaning: Life is absurd.

THE PROBLEM OF COMEDY

Comedy writers often feel that in their wild world the principles
that guide the dramatist don’t apply. But whether coolly satiric or
madly farcical, comedy is simply another form of storytelling.
There are, however, important exceptions that begin in the deep
division between the comic and tragic visions of life.

The dramatist admires humanity and creates works that say, in
essence: Under the worst of circumstances the human spirit is
magnificent. Comedy points out that in the best of circumstances
human beings find some way to screw up.

When we peek behind the grinning mask of comic cynicism,
we find a frustrated idealist. The comic sensibility wants the world
to be perfect, but when it looks around, it finds greed, corruption,
lunacy. The result is an angry and depressed artist. If you doubt
that, ask one over for dinner. Every host in Hollywood has made
that mistake: “Let’s invite some comedy writers to the party! That’ll
brighten things up.” Sure . . . till the paramedics arrive.

These angry idealists, however, know that if they lecture the
world about what a rotten place it is, no one will listen. But if
they trivialize the exalted, pull the trousers down on snobbery, if
they expose society for its tyranny, folly, and greed, and get
people to laugh, then maybe things will change. Or balance. So
God bless comedy writers. What would life be like without
them?

Comedy is pure: If the audience laughs, it works; if it doesn’t
laugh, it doesn’t work. End of discussion. That’s why critics hate
comedy; there’s nothing to say. If I were to argue that CITIZEN
KANE is a bloated exercise in razzle-dazzle spectacle, populated by
stereotypical characters, twisted with manipulative storytelling,

360 + ROBERT MCKEE

stuffed full of self-contradictory Freudian and Pirandellian cliches,
made by a heavy-handed showoff out to impress the world, we
might bicker forever because the CITIZEN KANE audience is silent.
But if I were to say A FISH CALLED WANDA is not funny, you'll
pity me and walk away. In comedy laughter settles all arguments.

The dramatist is fascinated by the inner life, the passions and
sins, madness and dreams of the human heart. But not the comedy
writer. He fixes on the social life—the idiocy, arrogance, and bru¬
tality in society. The comedy writer singles out a particular institu¬
tion that he feels has become encrusted with hypocrisy and folly,
then goes on the attack. Often we can spot the social institution
under assault by noting the film's title.

THE RULING CLASS attacks the rich; so too TRADING
PLACES, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA, MY MAN GODFREY.
M*A*S*H assaults the military, as do PRIVATE BENJAMIN and
STRIPES. Romantic Comedies— HIS GIRL FRIDAY, THE LADY
EVE, WHEN HARRY MET SALLY—satirize the institution of
courtship. NETWORK, POLICE ACADEMY, ANIMAL HOUSE,
THIS IS SPINAL TAP, PRIZZI'S HONOR, THE PRODUCERS,
DR. STRANGELOVE, NASTY HABITS, and CAMP NOWHERE
strike at television, school, fraternities, rock 'n' roll, the mafia, the
theatre, Cold War politics, the Catholic Church, and summer camp,
respectively. If a film genre grows thick with self-importance, it too
is ripe for mockery: AIRPLANE, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN,
NAKED GUN. What was known as Comedy of Manners has become
the sitcom—a satire of middle-class behavior.

When a society cannot ridicule and criticize its institutions, it
cannot laugh. The shortest book ever written would be the history
of German humor, a culture that has suffered spells of paralyzing
fear of authority. Comedy is at heart an angry, antisocial art. To
solve the problem of weak comedy, therefore, the writer first asks:
What am I angry about? He finds that aspect of society that heats
his blood and goes on an assault.

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS + 361

Comic Design

In drama the audience continuously grabs handfuls of the future,
pulling themselves through, wanting to know the outcome. But
Comedy allows the writer to halt Narrative Drive, the forward pro¬
jecting mind of the audience, and interpolate into the telling a
scene with no story purpose. It's there just for the yucks.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS: Masochistic patient (Bill Murray)
visits sadistic dentist (Steve Martin), and as he cuddles up in the chair,
says: “I want a long, slow root canal.” It’s drop-dead funny but has
nothing to do with the story. If cut, no one would notice. But should it
be cut? Hell no, it's hysterical. How litde story can be told and how
much pure comedy worked into a film? Watch the Marx Brothers. A
sharp story, complete with Inciting Incident, first, second, and third
act climaxes, always holds a Marx Brothers film together ... for a total
screentime of about ten minutes. The other eighty minutes are sur¬
rendered to the dizzying genius of Marx Brothers shtick.

Comedy tolerates more coincidence than drama, and may even
allow a deus ex machina ending ... if two things are done: First, the
audience is made to feel that the comic protagonist has suffered
enormously. Second, that he never despairs, never loses hope. Under
these conditions the audience may think: “Oh, hell, give it to him.”

THE GOLD RUSH: At Climax the Little Chap (Charlie Chaplin)
is nearly frozen to death when a blizzard rips his cabin off the
ground, blows it and Chaplin across Alaska, then drops him smack
on a gold mine. CUT TO: He’s rich, dressed to the nines, smoking a
cigar, heading back to the States. A comic coincidence that leaves
the audience thinking, “This guy ate his shoes, was almost cannibal¬
ized by other miners, devoured by a grizzly bear, rejected by the
dance hall girls—he walked all the way to Alaska. Give ’im a break."

The incisive difference between comedy and drama is this: Both
turn scenes with surprise and insight, but in comedy, when the Gap
cracks open, the surprise explodes the great belly laughs of the night.

A FISH CALLED WANDA: Archie takes Wanda to a borrowed
love nest. Panting with anticipation, she watches from the sleeping
loft as Archie pirouettes around the room, stripping buck naked,

362 « ROBERT MCKEE

intoning Russian poetry that makes her writhe. He puts his under¬
wear on his head and declares himself free of the fear of embar¬
rassment . . . the door opens and in walks an entire family. A killer
Gap between expectation and result.

Simply put, a Comedy is a funny story, an elaborate rolling joke.
While wit lightens a telling, it doesn’t alone make it a true Comedy.
Rather, wit often creates hybrids such as the Dramedy (ANNIE
HALL), or the Crimedy (LETHAL WEAPON). You know you’ve
written a true comedy when you sit an innocent victim down and
pitch your story. Just tell him what happens, without quoting witty
dialogue or sight gags, and he laughs. Every time you turn the
scene, he laughs; turn it again and he laughs again; turn, laugh,
until by the end of the pitch you have him collapsed on the floor.
That’s a Comedy. If you pitch your story and people don’t laugh,
you’ve not written a Comedy. You’ve written . . . something else.

The solution, however, is not found in trying to devise clever
lines or pie in the face. Gags come naturally when the comic struc¬
ture calls for them. Instead, concentrate on Turning Points. For
each action first ask, “What’s the opposite of that?” then take it a
step farther to “What’s off-the-wall from that?” Spring gaps of
comic surprise—write a funny story.

THE PROBLEM OF POINT OF VIEW

For the screenwriter Point of View has two meanings. First, we
occasionally call for POV shots. For example:

INT. DINING ROOM—DAY

Jack sips coffee, when suddenly he hears a SCREECH OF BRAKES
and a CRASH that shakes the house. He rushes to the window.

JACK’S POV

out the window: Tony’s car crumpled against the garage door
and his son staggering across the lawn, giggling drunk.

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS * 363

ON JACK

throwing open the window in a rage.

The second meaning, however, applies to the writer's vision.
From what Point of View is each scene written? From what Point
of View is the story as a whole told?

POV WITHIN A SCENE

Each story is set in a specific time and place, yet scene by scene,
as we imagine events, where do we locate ourselves in space to
view the action? This is Point of View—the physical angle we
take in order to describe the behavior of our characters, their
interaction with one another and the environment. How we make
our choices of Point of View has enormous influence on how the
reader reacts to the scene and how the director will later stage and
shoot it.

We can imagine ourselves anywhere 360 degrees around an
action or at the center of the action looking out in 360 different
degrees—high above the action, below it, anywhere globally. Each
choice of POV has a different effect on empathy and emotion.

For example, continuing the father/son scene above, Jack calls
Tony to the window and they argue. The father demands to know
why a son in medical school is drunk and learns that the university
has expelled him. Tony wanders off, distraught. Jack races through
the house to the street and consoles his son.

There are four distinctively different POV choices in this scene:
One, put Jack exclusively at the center of your imagination. Follow
him from table to window, seeing what he sees and his reactions to
it. Then move with him through the house to the street as he
chases after Tony to embrace him. Two, do the same with Tony.
Stay with him exclusively as he weaves his car up the street, across
the lawn, and into the garage door. Show his reactions when he
stumbles out of the wreck to confront his father at the window.
Take him down the street, then suddenly turn him as his father

364 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

runs up to hug him. Three, alternate between Jack’s POV and
Tony’s POV. Four, take a neutral POV. Imagine them, as a comedy
writer might, at a distance and in profile.

This first encourages us to empathize with Jack, the second
asks empathy for Tony, the third draws us close to both, the fourth
with neither and prompts us to laugh at them.

POV WITHIN THE STORY

If in the two hours of a feature film you can bring audience mem¬
bers to a complex and deeply satisfying relationship with just one
character, an understanding and involvement they will carry for a
lifetime, you have done far more than most films. Generally, there¬
fore, it enhances the telling to style the whole story from the pro¬
tagonist’s Point of View—to discipline yourself to the protagonist,
make him the center of your imaginative universe, and bring the
whole story, event by event, to the protagonist. The audience wit¬
nesses events only as the protagonist encounters them. This,
clearly, is the far more difficult way to tell story.

The easy way is to hopscotch through time and space, picking
up bits and pieces to facilitate exposition, but this makes story
sprawl and lose tension. Like limited setting, genre convention,
and Controlling Idea, shaping a story from the exclusive Point of
View of the protagonist is a creative discipline. It taxes the imagina¬
tion and demands your very best work. The result is a tight,
smooth, memorable character and story.

The more time spent with a character, the more oppor¬
tunity to witness his choices. The result is more empathy
and emotional involvement between audience and
character.

THE PROBLEM OF ADAPTATION

The conceit of adaptation is that the hard work of story can be
avoided by optioning a literary work and simply shifting it into a

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS + 365

screenplay. That is almost never the case. To grasp the difficulties
of adaptation we look again at story complexity.

In the twentieth century we now have three media for telling
story: prose (novel, novella, short story), theatre (legit, musical,
opera, mime, ballet), and screen (film and television). Each medium
tells complex stories by bringing characters into simultaneous con¬
flict on all three levels of life; however, each has a distinctive power
and innate beauty at one of these levels.

The unique strength and wonder of the novel is the dramatiza¬
tion of inner conflict. This is what prose does best, far better than play
or film. Whether in first- or third-person, the novelist slips inside
thought and feeling with subtlety, density, and poetic imagery to pro¬
ject onto the reader’s imagination the turmoil and passions of inner
conflict. In the novel extra-personal conflict is delineated through
description, word pictures of characters struggling with society or
environment, while personal conflict is shaped through dialogue.

The unique command and grace of the theatre is the dramati¬
zation of personal conflict. This is what the theatre does best, far
better than novel or film. A great play is almost pure dialogue, per¬
haps 80 percent is for the ear, only 20 percent for the eye. Non¬
verbal communication—gestures, looks, lovemaking, fighting—is
important, but, by and large, personal conflicts evolve for better or
worse through talk. What’s more, the playwright has a license
screenwriters do not—he may write dialogue in a way no human
being has ever spoken. He may write, not just poetic dialogue, but,
like Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, and Christopher Frye, use poetry itself
as dialogue, lifting the expressivity of personal conflict to incredible
heights. In addition, he has the live voice of the actor to add
nuances of shading and pause that take it even higher.

In the theatre inner conflict is dramatized through subtext. As
the actor brings the character to life from the inside, the audience
sees through the sayings and doings to the thoughts and feelings
underneath. Like a first-person novel, the theatre can send a char¬
acter to the apron in soliloquy to speak intimately with the audi¬
ence. In direct address, however, the character isn’t necessarily
telling the truth, or if sincere, isn’t able to understand his inner life

366 4 ROBERT MCKEE

and tell the whole truth. The theatre’s power to dramatize inner
conflict through unspoken subtext is ample but, compared to the
novel, limited. The stage can also dramatize extra-personal con¬
flicts, but how much of society can it hold? How much environ¬
ment of sets and props?

The unique power and splendor of the cinema is the dramatiza¬
tion of extra-personal conflict, huge and vivid images of human
beings wrapped inside their society and environment, striving with
life. This is what film does best, better than play or novel. If we
were to take a single frame from BLADE RUNNER and ask the
world’s finest prose stylist to create the verbal equivalent of that
composition, he would fill page after page with words and never
capture its essence. And that is only one of thousands of complex
images flowing through the experience of an audience.

Critics often complain about chase sequences, as if they were a
new phenomenon. The first great discovery of the Silent Era was
the chase, enlivening Charlie Chaplin and the Keystone Cops, thou¬
sands of Westerns, most of D. W. Griffith’s films, BEN HUR, THE
BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, STORM OVER ASIA, and the beau¬
tiful SUNRISE. The chase is a human being pursued by society,
struggling through the physical world to escape and survive. It’s
pure extra-personal conflict, pure cinema, the most natural thing to
want to do with a camera and editing machine.

To express personal conflict the screenwriter must use plain-
spoken dialogue. When we use theatrical language on screen the
audience’s rightful reaction is: “People don’t talk like that.” Other
than the special case of filmed Shakespeare, screenwriting
demands naturalistic talk. Film, however, gains great power in
nonverbal communication. With close-up, lighting, and nuances of
angle, gestures and facial expressions become very eloquent.
Nonetheless, the screenwriter cannot dramatize personal conflict to
the poetic fullness of the theatre.

The dramatization of inner conflict on screen is exclusively in
the subtext as the camera looks through the face of the actor to
thoughts and feelings within. Even the personal direct-to-camera
narration in ANNIE HALL or Salieri’s confession in AMADEUS is

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS ♦ 367

layered with subtext. The inner life can be expressed impressively
in film, but it cannot reach the density or complexity of a novel.

That is the lay of the land. Now imagine the problems of adap¬
tation. Over the decades hundreds of millions of dollars have been
spent to option the film rights to literary works that are then tossed
into the laps of screenwriters who read them and go running,
screaming into the night, “Nothing’s happens! The whole book is
in the character's head!”

Therefore, the first principle of adaptation: The purer the novel,
the purer the play, the worse the film.

“Literary purity” does not mean literary achievement. Purity of
novel means a telling located exclusively at the level of inner con¬
flict, employing linguistic complexities to incite, advance, and
climax story with relative independence of personal, social, and
environmental forces: Joyce’s Ulysses. Purity of theatre means a
telling located exclusively at the level of personal conflict,
employing the spoken word in poetic excess to incite, advance, and
climax story with relative independence of inner, social, and envi¬
ronmental forces: Eliot’s The Cocktail Party.

Attempts to adapt “pure” literature fail for two reasons: One is
aesthetic impossibility. Image is prelinguistic; no cinematic equiva¬
lences or even approximations exist for conflicts buried in the
extravagant language of master novelists and playwrights. Two,
when a lesser talent attempts to adapt genius, which is more likely?
Will a lesser talent rise to the level of genius, or will genius be
dragged down to the level of the adaptor?

The world’s screens are frequently stained by pretentious film¬
makers who wish to be regarded as another Fellini or Bergman,
but unlike Fellini and Bergman cannot create original works, so
they go to equally pretentious funding agencies with a copy of
Proust or Woolf in hand, promising to bring art to the masses. The
bureaucrats grant the money, politicians congratulate themselves
to their constituents for bringing art to the masses, the director
gets a paycheck, the film vanishes over a weekend.

If you must adapt, come down a rung or two from “pure” litera¬
ture and look for stories in which conflict is distributed on all three

368 « ROBERT MCKEE

levels . . . with an emphasis at the extra-personal. Pierre Boulle’s The
Bridge on the River Kwai won't be taught alongside Thomas Mann
and Franz Kafka in postgraduate seminars, but it's an excellent
work, populated with complex characters driven by inner and per¬
sonal conflicts and dramatized primarily at extrapersonal level. Con¬
sequently, Carl Foreman’s adaptation became, in my judgment,
David Lean's finest film.

To adapt, first read the work over and over without taking notes
until you feel infused with its spirit. Do not make choices or plan
moves until you’ve rubbed shoulders with its society, read their
faces, smelled their cologne. As with a story you’re creating from
scratch, you must achieve a godlike knowledge and never assume
that the original writer has done his homework. That done, reduce
each event to a one- or two-sentence statement of what happens
and no more. No psychology, no sociology. For example: “He walks
into the house expecting a confrontation with his wife, but dis¬
covers a note telling him she’s left him for another man.”

That done, read through the events and ask yourself, “Is this
story well told?” Then brace yourself, for nine times out of ten
you'll discover it’s not. Just because a writer got a play to the stage
or a novel into print doesn’t mean that he has mastered the craft.
Story is the hardest thing we all do. Many novelists are weak story¬
tellers, playwrights even weaker. Or you’ll discover that it’s beauti¬
fully told, a clockwork of perfection . . . but four hundred pages
long, three times as much material as you can use for a film, and if
a single cog is taken out, the clock stops telling time. In either case,
your task will not be one of adaptation but of reinvention.

The second principle of adaptation: Be willing to reinvent.

Tell the story in filmic rhythms while keeping the spirit of the
original. To reinvent: No matter in what order the novel’s events
were told, reorder them in time from first to last, as if they were
biographies. From these create a step-outline, using, where valuable,
designs from the original work, but feeling free to cut scenes and, if
necessary, to create new ones. Most testing of all, turn what is mental
into the physical. Don't fill characters’ mouths with self-explanatory
dialogue but find visual expression for their inner conflicts. This is

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS ♦ 369

where you’ll succeed or fail. Seek a design that expresses the spirit of
the original yet stays within the rhythms of a film, ignoring the risk
that critics may say, “But the film’s not like the novel.”

The aesthetics of the screen often demand reinvention of story,
even when the original is superbly told and of feature-film size. As
Milos Foreman told Peter Shaffer while adapting AMADEUS from
stage to screen, “You're going to have to give birth to your child a
second time.” The result is that the world now has two excellent ver¬
sions of the same story, each true to its medium. While struggling
with an adaptation bear this in mind: If reinvention deviates radically
from the original—PELLE THE CONQUEROR, DANGEROUS
LIAISONS—but the film is excellent, critics fall silent. But if you
butcher the original—THE SCARLET LETTER, THE BONFIRE OF
THE VANITIES—and do not put a work as good or better in its
place, duck.

To learn adaptation study the work of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. She
is, in my view, the finest adapter of novel to screen in film history.
She’s a Pole bom in Germany who writes in English. Having rein¬
vented her nationality, she’s become the master reinventer for film.
Like a chameleon or trance-medium, she inhabits the colors and spirit
of other writers. Read Quartet, A Room with a View, The Bostonians,
pull a step-outline from each novel, then scene by scene compare your
work to fhabvala. You’ll leam a lot. Notice that she and director James
Ivory restrict themselves to the social novelists—Jean Rhys, E. M.
Forster, Henry James—knowing that the primary conflicts will be
extra-personal and camera attractive. No Proust, no Joyce, no Kafka.

Although the natural expressivity of cinema is extra-personal, it
shouldn’t inhibit us. Rather, the challenge that great filmmakers
have always accepted is to start with images of social/environ¬
mental conflict and lead us into the complexities of personal rela¬
tionships, to begin on the surface of what’s said and done and
guide us to a perception of the inner life, the unspoken, the uncon¬
scious—to swim upstream and achieve on film what the play¬
wright and novelist do most easily.

By the same token, playwright and novelist have always under¬
stood that their challenge is to do on stage or page what film does

370 + ROBERT MCKEE

best. Flaubert's famous cinematic style was developed long before
there was cinema. Eisenstein said he learned to cut film by reading
Charles Dickens. Shakespeare's stunning fluidity through time and
space suggests an imagination hungry for a camera. Great story¬
tellers have always known that “Show, don’t tell” is the ultimate
creative task: to write in a purely dramatic and visual way, to show a
natural world of natural human being behavior, to express the com¬
plexity of life without telling.

THE PROBLEM OF MELODRAMA

To avoid the accusation “This script is melodramatic,” many
avoid writing “big scenes,” passionate, powerful events. Instead,
they write minimalist sketches in which little if anything hap¬
pens, thinking they’re subtle. This is folly. Nothing human
beings do in and of itself is melodramatic, and human beings are
capable of anything. Daily newspapers record acts of enormous
self-sacrifice and cruelty, of daring and cowardliness, of saints
and tyrants from Mother Teresa to Saddam Hussein. Anything
you can imagine human beings doing, they have already done
and in ways you cannot imagine. None of it is melodrama; it's
simply human.

Melodrama is not the result of overexpression, but of under
motivation; not writing too big, but writing with too little desire.
The power of an event can only be as great as the sum total of its
causes. We feel a scene is melodramatic if we cannot believe that
motivation matches action. Writers from Homer to Shakespeare to
Bergman have created explosive scenes no one would call melo¬
drama because they knew how to motivate characters. If you can
imagine high drama or comedy, write it, but lift the forces that
drive your characters to equal or surpass the extremities of their
actions and we’ll embrace you for taking us to the end of the line.

THE PROBLEM OF HOLES

A “hole” is another way to lose credibility. Rather than a lack of
motivation, now the story lacks logic, a missing link in the chain of

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS + 371

cause and effect. But like coincidence, holes are a part of life.
Things often happen for reasons that cannot be explained. So if
you’re writing about life, a hole or two may find its way into your
telling. The problem is how to handle it.

If you can forge a link between illogical events and close the
hole, do so. This remedy, however, often requires the creation of a
new scene that has no purpose other than making what’s around it
logical, causing an awkwardness as annoying as the hole.

In which case ask: Will they notice? You know it’s a jump in
logic because the story sits still on your desk with its hole glaring
up at you. But onscreen the story flows in time. As the hole arrives,
the audience may not have sufficient information at that point to
realize that what just happened isn’t logical or it may happen so
quickly, it passes unnoticed.

CHINATOWN: Ida Sessions (Diane Ladd) impersonates Evelyn
Mulwray and hires J. J. Gittes to investigate Hollis Mulwray for
adultery. After Gittes discovers what appears to be an affair, the
real wife shows up with her lawyer and a lawsuit. Gittes realizes
that someone is out to get Mulwray, but before he can help the
man is murdered. Early in Act Two Gittes gets a phone call from
Ida Sessions telling him that she had no idea that things would
lead to murder and wants him to know she's innocent. In this call
she also gives Gittes a vital clue to the motivation for the killing.
Her words, however, are so cryptic he’s only more confused. Later,
however, he pieces her clue to other evidence he unearths and
thinks he knows who did it and why.

Early in Act Three he finds Ida Sessions dead and in her wallet
discovers a Screen Actors Guild card. In other words, Ida Sessions
couldn't possibly have known what she said over the phone. Her
clue is a crucial detail of a citywide corruption run by millionaire
businessmen and high government officials, something they would
never have told the actress they hired to impersonate the victim’s
wife. But when she tells Gittes, we have no idea who Ida Sessions
is and what she could or could not know. When she’s found dead
an hour and a half later, we don’t see the hole because by then
we’ve forgotten what she said.

372 * ROBERT MCKEE

So maybe the audience won't notice. But maybe it will. Then
what? Cowardly writers try to kick sand over such holes and hope the
audience doesn't notice. Other writers face this problem manfully.
They expose the hole to the audience, then deny that it is a hole.

CASABLANCA: Ferrari (Sidney Greenstreet) is the ultimate capi¬
talist and crook who never does anything except for money. Yet at one
point Ferrari helps Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) find the precious let¬
ters of transit and wants nothing in return. That’s out of character,
illogical. Knowing this, the writers gave Ferrari the line: “Why I’m
doing this I don’t know because it can't possibly profit me .. .” Rather
than hiding the hole, the writers admitted it with the bold lie that Fer¬
rari might be impulsively generous. The audience knows we often do
things for reasons we can’t explain. Complimented, it nods, thinking,
“Even Ferrari doesn’t get it. Fine. On with the film.”

THE TERMINATOR doesn't have a hole—it’s built over an abyss:
In 2029 robots have all but exterminated the human race, when the
remnants of humanity, lead by John Connor, turn the tide of the war.
To eliminate their enemy, the robots invent a time machine and send
the Terminator back to 1984 to kill the mother of John Connor before
he’s bom. Connor captures their device and sends a young officer,
Reese, back to try to destroy the Terminator first. He does this
knowing that indeed Reese will not only save his mother but get her
pregnant, and therefore his lieutenant is his father. What?

But James Cameron and Gail Anne Hurd understand Narrative
Drive. They knew that if they exploded two warriors from the
future into the streets of Los Angeles and sent them roaring in pur¬
suit of this poor woman, the audience wouldn’t be asking analytical
questions, and bit by bit they could parse out their setup. But
respecting the intelligence of the audience, they also knew that
after the film over coffee the audience might think: “Wait a minute
... if Connor knew Reese would . . . ,” and so on, and the holes
would swallow up the audience’s pleasure. So they wrote this reso¬
lution scene.

The pregnant Sarah Connor heads for the safety of remote
mountains in Mexico, there to give birth and raise her son for his
future mission. At a gas station she dictates memoirs to her

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 4 373

unborn hero into a tape recorder and she says in effect: “You know,
my son, I don't get it. If you know that Reese will be your father . . .
then why ... ? How? And does that mean that this is going to
happen again . . . and again ... ?” Then she pauses and says, “You
know, you could go crazy thinking about this.” And all over the
world audiences thought: “Hell, she’s right. It’s not important.”
With that they happily threw logic into the trash.

17

CHARACTER

THE MIND WORM

As I traced the evolution of story through the twenty-eight cen¬
turies since Homer, I thought I’d save a thousand years and skip
from the fourth century to the Renaissance because, according to
my undergrad history text, during the Dark Ages all thinking
stopped while monks dithered over such questions as “How many
angels dance on the head of a pin?” Skeptical, I looked a little
deeper and found that in fact intellectual life in the medieval epoch
went on vigorously . . . but in poetic code. When the metaphor was
deciphered, researchers discovered that “How many angels dance
on the head of pin?” isn’t metaphysics, it’s physics. The topic under
discussion is atomic structure: “How small is small?”

To discuss psychology, medieval scholarship devised another
ingenious conceit: the Mind Worm. Suppose a creature had the
power to burrow into the brain and come to know an individual
completely—dreams, fears, strength, weakness. Suppose that this
Mind Worm also had the power to cause events in the world. It
could then create a specific happening geared to the unique nature
of that person that would trigger a one-of-a-kind adventure, a quest
that would force him to use himself to the limit, to live to his
deepest and fullest. Whether a tragedy or fulfillment, this quest
would reveal his humanity absolutely.

Reading that I had to smile, for the writer is a Mind Worm. We
too burrow into a character to discover his aspects, his potential.

374

CHARACTER ♦ 375

then create an event geared to his unique nature—the Inciting Inci¬
dent. For each protagonist it’s different—for one perhaps finding a
fortune, for another losing a fortune—but we design the event to fit
the character, the precise happening needed to send him on a quest
that reaches the limits of his being. Like the Mind Worm, we
explore the inscape of human nature, expressed in poetic code. For
as centuries pass, nothing changes within us. As William Faulkner
observed, human nature is the only subject that doesn’t date.

Characters Are Not Human Beings

A character is no more a human being than the Venus de Milo is a
real woman. A character is a work of art, a metaphor for human
nature. We relate to characters as if they were real, but they’re
superior to reality. Their aspects are designed to be clear and know-
able; whereas our fellow humans are difficult to understand, if not
enigmatic. We know characters better than we know our friends
because a character is eternal and unchanging, while people
shift—just when we think we understand them, we don’t. In fact, I
know Rick Blaine in CASABLANCA better than I know myself.
Rick is always Rick. I’m a bit iffy.

Character design begins with an arrangement of the two pri¬
mary aspects: Characterization and True Character. To repeat: Char¬
acterization is the sum of all the observable qualities, a
combination that makes the character unique: physical appearance
coupled with mannerisms, style of speech and gesture, sexuality,
age, IQ, occupation, personality, attitudes, values, where he lives,
how he lives. True Character waits behind this mask. Despite his
characterization, at heart who is this person? Loyal or disloyal?
Honest or a liar? Loving or cruel? Courageous or cowardly? Gen¬
erous or selfish? Willful or weak?

TRUE CHARACTER can only be expressed through
choice in dilemma. How the person chooses to act
under pressure is who he is—the greater the pressure,
the truer and deeper the choice to character.

376 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

The key to True Character is desire. In life, if we feel stifled, the
fastest way to get unstuck is to ask, “What do I want?,” listen to the
honest answer, then find the will to pursue that desire. Problems
still remain, but now we're in motion with the chance of solving
them. What’s true of life is true of fiction. A character comes to life
the moment we glimpse a clear understanding of his desire—not
only the conscious, but in a complex role, the unconscious desire
as well.

Ask: What does this character want? Now? Soon? Overall?
Knowingly? Unknowingly? With clear, true answers comes your
command of the role.

Behind desire is motivation. Why does your character want
what he wants? You have your ideas about motive, but don’t be sur¬
prised if others see it differently. A friend may feel that parental
upbringing shaped your character’s desires; someone else may
think it’s our materialist culture; another may blame the school
system; yet another may claim it’s in the genes; still another thinks
he’s possessed by the devil. Contemporary attitudes tend to favor
mono-explanations for behavior, rather than the complexity of
forces that’s more likely the case.

Do not reduce characters to case studies (an episode of child
abuse is the cliche in vogue at the moment), for in truth there are
no definitive explanations for anyone’s behavior. Generally, the more
the writer nails motivation to specific causes, the more he diminishes the
character in the audience's mind. Rather, think through to a solid
understanding of motive, but at the same time leave some mystery
around the whys, a touch of the irrational perhaps, room for the
audience to use its own life experience to enhance your character in
its imagination.

In King Lear, for example, Shakespeare cast one of his most com¬
plex villains, Edmund. After a scene in which astrological influences,
yet another mono-explanation of behavior, are blamed for someone’s
misfortune, Edmund turns in soliloquy and laughs, “I should have
been what I am had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled
on my bastardy.” Edmund does evil for the pure pleasure of it.
Beyond that, what matters? As Aristotle observed, why a man does a

CHARACTER ♦ 377

thing is of little interest once we see the thing he does. A character is
the choices he makes to take the actions he takes. Once the deed is
done his reasons why begin to dissolve into irrelevancy.

The audience comes to understand your character in a variety
of ways: The physical image and setting say a lot, but the audience
knows that appearance is not reality, characterization is not true
character. Nonetheless, a character’s mask is an important clue to
what may be revealed.

What other characters say about a character is a hint. We know
that what one person says of another may or may not be true, given
the axes people have to grind, but that it’s said and by whom is
worth knowing. What a character says about himself may or may
not be true. We listen, but then put it in our pockets.

In fact, characters with lucid self-knowledge, those reciting self-
explanatory dialogue meant to convince us that they are who they
say they are, are not only boring but phony. The audience knows
that people rarely, if ever, understand themselves, and if they do,
they’re incapable of complete and honest self-explanation. There’s
always a subtext. If, by chance, what a character says about himself
is actually true, we don’t know it’s true until we witness his choices
made under pressure. Self-explanation must be validated or contra¬
dicted in action. In CASABLANCA when Rick says, “I stick my
neck out for no man," we think, “Well, not yet, Rick, not yet." We
know Rick better than he knows himself, for indeed he’s wrong;
he’ll stick his neck out many times.

Character Dimension

'Dimension” is the least understood concept in character. When I
was an actor, directors would insist on “round, three-dimensional
characters," and I was all for that, but when I asked them what
exactly is a dimension and how do I create one, let alone three, they’d
waffle, mumble something about rehearsal, then stroll away.

Some years ago a producer pitched me what he believed to be a
"three-dimensional” protagonist in these terms: “Jessie just got out
of prison, but while he was in the slammer he boned up on finance

378 4 ROBERT MCKEE

and investment, so he's an expert on stocks, bonds, and securities.
He can also break dance. He's got a black belt in karate and plays a
mean jazz saxophone.” His “Jessie” was as flat as a desktop—a
cluster of traits stuck on a name. Decorating a protagonist with
quirks does not open his character and draw empathy. Rather,
eccentricities may close him off and keep us at a distance.

A favorite academic tenet argues that, instead, fine characters
are marked by one dominant trait. Macbeth's ambition is fre¬
quently cited. Overweening ambition, it’s claimed, makes Macbeth
great. This theory is dead wrong. If Macbeth were merely ambi¬
tious, there’d be no play. He’d simply defeat the English and rule
Scotland. Macbeth is a brilliantly realized character because of the
contradiction between his ambition on one hand and his guilt on
the other. From this profound inner contradiction springs his pas¬
sion, his complexity, his poetry.

Dimension means contradiction: either within deep character
(guilt-ridden ambition) or between characterization and deep char¬
acter (a charming thief). These contradictions must be consistent. It
doesn’t add dimension to portray a guy as nice throughout a film,
then in one scene have him kick a cat.

Consider Hamlet, the most complex character ever written.
Hamlet isn’t three-dimensional, but ten, twelve, virtually uncount-
ably dimensional. He seems spiritual until he’s blasphemous. To
Ophelia he's first loving and tender, then callous, even sadistic.
He’s courageous, then cowardly. At times he’s cool and cautious,
then impulsive and rash, as he stabs someone hiding behind a cur¬
tain without knowing who’s there. Hamlet is ruthless and compas¬
sionate, proud and self-pitying, witty and sad, weary and dynamic,
lucid and confused, sane and mad. His is an innocent worldliness,
a worldly innocence, a living contradiction of almost any human
qualities we could imagine.

Dimensions fascinate; contradictions in nature or behavior
rivet the audience’s concentration. Therefore, the protagonist must
be the most dimensional character in the cast to focus empathy on
the star role. If not, the Center of Good decenters; the fictional uni¬
verse flies apart; the audience loses balance.

CHARACTER + 379

BLADE RUNNER: Marketing positioned the audience to
empathize with Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard, but once in the the¬
atre, filmgoers were drawn to the greater dimensionality of the repli¬
cant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer). As the Center of Good shifted to the
antagonist, the audience’s emotional confusion diminished its enthu¬
siasm, and what should have been a huge success became a cult film.

Cast Design

In essence, the protagonist creates the rest of the cast. All other
characters are in a story first and foremost because of the relation¬
ship they strike to the protagonist and the way each helps to delin¬
eate the dimensions of the protagonist’s complex nature. Imagine a
cast as a kind of solar system with the protagonist as the sun, sup¬
porting roles as planets around the sun, bit players as satellites
around the planets—all held in orbit by the gravitational pull of the
star at the center, each pulling at the tides of the others’ natures.

Consider this hypothetical protagonist: He’s amusing and opti¬
mistic, then morose and cynical; he’s compassionate, then cruel;
fearless, then fearful. This four-dimensional role needs a cast
around him to delineate his contradictions, characters toward
whom he can act and react in different ways at different times and
places. These supporting characters must round him out so that
his complexity is both consistent and credible.

Character A, for example, provokes the protagonist’s sadness
and cynicism, while Character B brings out his witty, hopeful side.
Character C inspires his loving and courageous emotions, while
Character D forces him first to cower in fear, then to strike out in
fury. The creation and design of characters A, B, C, and D is dic¬
tated by the needs of the protagonist. They are what they are princi¬
pally to make clear and believable, through action and reaction, the
complexity of the central role.

Although supporting roles must be scaled back from the pro¬
tagonist, they too may be complex. Character A could be two-
dimensional: outwardly beautiful and loving/inwardly grotesque
as choices under pressure reveal cold, mutated desires. Even one

380 4 ROBERT MCKEE

dimension can create an excellent supporting role. Character B
could, like the Terminator, have a single yet fascinating contradic¬
tion: machine versus human. If the Terminator were merely a
robot or a man from the future, he might not be interesting. But
he's both, and his machine/human dimension makes a superb
villain.

The physical and social world in which a character is found, his
or her profession or neighborhood, for example, is an aspect of
characterization. Dimension, therefore, can be created by a simple
counterpoint: Placing a conventional personality against an exotic
background, or a strange, mysterious individual within an ordi¬
nary, down-to-earth society immediately generates interest.

Bit parts should be drawn deliberately flat. . . but not dull. Give
each a freshly observed trait that makes the role worth playing for
the moment the actor’s onscreen, but no more.

CHARACTER « 381

For example, suppose your protagonist is visiting New York
City for the first time, and as she steps out of Kennedy Airport, she
can’t wait for her first ride with a New York taxi driver. How to
write that role? Do you make him a philosophizing eccentric with a
baseball cap sideways on his head? I hope not. For the last six
decades every time we get in a cab in a New York movie, there he
is, the kooky New York cab driver.

Perhaps you create the screen’s first silent New York cab driver.
She tries to start New York conversations about the Yankees, the
Knicks, the mayor’s office, but he just straightens his tie and drives
on. She slumps back, her first New York disappointment.

On the other hand, the cab driver to end all cab drivers: a gravel¬
voiced but wonderfully obliging oddball who gives her a definitive tuto¬
rial in big-city survival—how to wear her purse strap across her chest,
where to keep her mace can. Then he drives her to the Bronx, charges
her a hundred and fifty bucks and tells her she’s in Manhattan. He
comes on helpful, turns into a thieving rat—a contradiction between
characterization and deep character. Now we’ll be looking all over the
film for this guy because we know that writers don’t put dimensions in
characters they’re not going to use again. If this cabby doesn’t show up
at least once more, we’ll be very annoyed. Don’t cause false anticipa¬
tion by making bit parts more interesting than necessary.

The cast orbits around the star, its protagonist. Supporting
roles are inspired by the central character and designed to delineate
his complex of dimensions. Secondary roles need not only the pro¬
tagonists but also one another, to bring out their dimensions. As
tertiary characters (E and F on the diagram) have scenes with the
protagonist or other principals, they also help reveal dimensions.
Ideally, in every scene each character brings out qualities that mark
the dimensions of the others, all held in constellation by the weight
of the protagonist at the center.

The Comic Character

All characters pursue desire against forces of antagonism. But the
dramatic character is flexible enough to step back from the risk and

382 4 ROBERT MCKEE

realize: “This could get me killed.” Not the comic character. The
comic character is marked by a blind obsession. The first step to
solving the problem of a character who should be funny but isn’t is
to find his mania.

When the political satires of Aristophanes and farcical
romances of Menander passed into history, Comedy degenerated
into the ribald, peasant cousin of Tragedy and Epic Poetry. But
with the coming of the Renaissance—from Goldoni in Italy to
Moliere in France (skipping Germany) to Shakespeare, Jonson,
Wycherley, Congreve, Sheridan; through Shaw, Wilde, Coward,
Chaplin, Allen, the crackling wits of England, Ireland, and
America—it ascended into the gleaming art of today—the saving
grace of modern life.

As these masters perfected their art, like all craftsmen, they
talked shop and came to realize that a comic character is created by
assigning the role a “humour,” an obsession the character does not
see. Moliere’s career was built on writing plays ridiculing the pro¬
tagonist's fixation —The Miser , The Imaginary Invalid, The Misan¬
thrope. Almost any obsession will do. Shoes, for example. Imelda
Marcos is an international joke because she doesn’t see her neu¬
rotic need for shoes, by some estimates over three thousand pairs.
Although in her tax trial here in New York she said it was only
twelve hundred . . . and none fit. They’re gifts from shoe compa¬
nies, she claimed, who never get the size right.

In All in the Family Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) was a
blindly obsessed bigot. As long as he doesn’t see it, he’s a buffoon
and we laugh at him. But if he were to turn to someone and say,
“You know, I am a racist hate monger,” the comedy is over.

A SHOT IN THE DARK: A chauffeur is murdered on the estate
of Benjamin Ballon (George Saunders). Enter a man obsessed with
being the world’s most perfect detective, Captain Clouseau (Peter
Sellers), who decides that Ballon did the deed and confronts the bil¬
lionaire in the billiards room. As Clouseau lays out his evidence, he
rips the felt on the pool table and smashes the cues, finally sum¬
ming up with: “. . . and zen you killed him in a rit of fealous jage.”
Clouseau turns to leave but walks around the wrong side of the

CHARACTER + 383

door. We hear THUMP as he hits the wall. He steps back and with
cool contempt, says, “Stupid architects.”

A FISH CALLED WANDA: Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis), a master
criminal, is obsessed with men who speak foreign languages. Otto
(Kevin Kline), a failed CIA agent, is convinced he's an intellec¬
tual—although, as Wanda points out, he makes mistakes such as
thinking that the London Underground is a political movement.
Ken (Michael Palin) is so obsessed with a love of animals that Otto
tortures him by eating his goldfish. Archie Leach (John Cleese) has
an obsessive fear of embarrassment, a fear, he tells us, that grips
the whole English nation. Midway through the film, however,
Archie realizes his obsession and once he sees it, he turns from
comic protagonist to romantic lead, from Archie Leach to “Cary
Grant.” (Archie Leach was Cary Grant's real name.)

Three Tips on Writing Characters for the Screen
1. Leave room for the actor.

This old Hollywood admonition asks the writer to provide each
actor with the maximum opportunity to use his or her creativity;
not to overwrite and pepper the page with constant description of
behaviors, nuances of gesture, tones of voice:

Bob leans on the lectern, crossing one leg over the other, one
arm akimbo. He looks out over the heads of the students,
arching an eyebrow thoughtfully:

BOB

(phlegmatically)

Blaa, blaa, blaa, blaa, blaa

An actor’s reaction to a script saturated with that kind of detail
is to toss it in the trash, thinking, “They don't want an actor, they
want a puppet.” Or if the actor accepts the role, he’ll take a red
pencil and scratch all that nonsense off the page. The details above

384 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

are meaningless. An actor wants to know: What do I want? Why do
I want it? How do I go about getting it? What stops me? What are
the consequences? The actor brings a character to life from the
subtext out: desire meeting forces of antagonism. On-camera he'll
say and do what the scene requires, but characterization must be
his work as much as or more than yours.

We must remember that, unlike the theatre where we hope our
work will be performed in hundreds, if not thousands of produc¬
tions, here and abroad, now and into the future, on screen there
will be only one production, only one performance of each char¬
acter fixed on film forever. Writer/actor collaboration begins when
the writer stops dreaming of a fictional face and instead imagines
the ideal casting. If a writer feels that a particular actor would be
his ideal protagonist and he envisions her while he writes, he'll be
constantly reminded of how little superb actors need to create pow¬
erful moments, and won’t write this:

BARBARA
(offering Jack a
cup)

Would you like this cup of
coffee, darling?

The audience sees it’s a cup of coffee; the gesture says, “Would
you like this?”; the actress is feeling “darling . . Sensing that less
is more, the actress will turn to her director and say: “Larry, do I
have to say ‘Would you like this cup of coffee, darling?’ I mean, I’m
offering the damn cup, right? Could we just cut that line?" The line
is cut, the actress sets the screen on fire silently offering a man a
cup of coffee, while the screenwriter rages, “They’re butchering my
dialogue!”

2. Fall in love with all your characters.

We often see films with a cast of excellent characters . . . except
one, who's dreadful. We wonder why until we realize that the
writer hates this character. He’s trivializing and insulting this role

CHARACTER + 385

at every opportunity. And I’ll never understand this. How can a
writer hate his own character? It’s his baby. How can he hate what
he gave life? Embrace all your creations, especially the bad people.
They deserve love like everyone else.

Hurt and Cameron must have loved their Terminator. Look at
the wonderful things they did for him: In a motel room he repairs a
damaged eye with an Exacto knife. Standing over a sink, he pries
his eyeball out of his head, drops it in the water, mops up the blood
with a towel, puts on Gargoyle sunglasses to hide the hole, then
looks in the mirror and smooths down his tangled hair. The
stunned audience thinks, “He just pried his eyeball out of his head
and he gives a damn what he looks like. He’s got vanity!”

Then a knock at the door. As he looks up, the camera takes his
POV and we see his computer screen super-imposed over the door.
On it is a list of responses to someone knocking: “Go away,” “Please
come back later,” “Fuck off,” “Fuck off, asshole.” His cursor goes up
and down while he makes his choice and stops at “Fuck off, ass¬
hole.” A robot with a sense of humor. Now the monster's all the
more terrifying, for thanks to these moments we have no idea of
what to expect from him, and therefore imagine the worst. Only
writers who love their characters discover such moments.

A hint about villains: If your character’s up to no good and you
place yourself within his being, asking, “If I were he in this situa¬
tion, what would I do?,” you'd do everything possible to get away
with it. Therefore, you would not act like a villain; you would not
twist your mustache. Sociopaths are the most charming folks we
ever meet—sympathetic listeners who seem so deeply concerned
about our problems while they lead us to hell.

An interviewer once remarked to Lee Marvin that he’d played
villains for thirty years and how awful it must be always playing
bad people. Marvin smiled, “Me? I don’t play bad people. I play
people struggling to get through their day, doing the best they can
with what life's given them. Others may think they’re bad, but no, I
never play bad people.” That’s why Marvin could be a superb vil¬
lain. He was a craftsman with a deep understanding of human
nature: No one thinks they’re bad.

386 4 ROBERT MCKEE

If you can’t love them, don’t write them. On the other hand,
permit neither your empathy nor antipathy for a character to pro¬
duce melodrama or stereotype. Love them all without losing your
clearheadedness.

3. Character is self-knowledge.

Everything I learned about human nature I learned from me.

—Anton Chekhov

Where do we find our characters? Partly through observation.
Writers often carry notepads or pocket tape recorders and as they
watch life’s passing show, collect bits and pieces to fill file cabinets
with random material. When they’re dry, they dip in for ideas to
stir the imagination.

We observe, but it's a mistake to copy life directly to the page.
Few individuals are as clear in their complexity and as well delin¬
eated as a character. Instead, like Dr. Frankenstein, we build char¬
acters out of parts found. A writer takes the analytical mind of his
sister and pieces it together with the comic wit of a friend, adds to
that the cunning cruelty of a cat and the blind persistence of King
Lear. We borrow bits and pieces of humanity, raw chunks of imagi¬
nation and observation from wherever they’re found, assemble
them into dimensions of contradiction, then round them into the
creatures we call characters.

Observation is our source of characterizations, but under¬
standing of deep character is found in another place. The root of all
fine character writing is self-knowledge.

One of the sad truths of life is that there’s only one person in
this vale of tears that we ever really know, and that’s ourselves.
We’re essentially and forever alone. Yet, although others remain
at a distance, changing and unknowable in a definitive, final
sense, and despite the obvious distinctions of age, sex, back¬
ground, and culture, despite all the clear differences among
people, the truth is we are all far more alike than we are different.
We are all human.

CHARACTER + 387

We all share the same crucial human experiences. Each of us is
suffering and enjoying, dreaming and hoping of getting through
our days with something of value. As a writer, you can be certain
that everyone coming down the street toward you, each in his own
way, is having the same fundamental human thoughts and feelings
that you are. This is why when you ask yourself, “If I were this
character in these circumstances, what would I do?” the honest
answer is always correct. You would do the human thing. There¬
fore, the more you penetrate the mysteries of your own humanity,
the more you come to understand yourself, the more you are able
to understand others.

When we survey the parade of characters that has marched out
of the imaginations of storytellers from Homer to Shakespeare,
Dickens, Austen, Hemingway, Williams, Wilder, Bergman, Goldman,
and all other masters—each character fascinating, unique, sub¬
limely human and so many, many of them—and realize that all
were born of a single humanity . . .it’s astounding.

THE TEXT

DIALOGUE

All the creativity and labor that goes into designing story and char¬
acter must finally be realized on the page. This chapter looks at the
text, at dialogue and description, and the craft that guides their
writing. Beyond text, it examines the poetics of story, the Image
Systems embedded in words that ultimately result in filmic images
that enrich meaning and emotion.

Dialogue is not conversation.

Eavesdrop on any coffee shop conversation and you'll realize in a
heartbeat you'd never put that slush onscreen. Real conversation is
full of awkward pauses, poor word choices and phrasing, non
sequiturs, pointless repetitions; it seldom makes a point or achieves
closure. But that’s okay because conversation isn’t about making
points or achieving closure. It’s what psychologists call “keeping the
channel open.” Talk is how we develop and change relationships.

When two friends meet on the street and talk about the weather,
don't we know that theirs isn’t a conversation about the weather?
What is being said? “I’m your friend. Let’s take a minute out of our
busy day and stand here in each other’s presence and reaffirm that
we are indeed friends.” They might talk about sports, weather, shop¬
ping . . . anything. But the text is not the subtext. What is said and
done is not what is thought and felt. The scene is not about what it

THE TEXT * 389

seems to be about. Screen dialogue, therefore, must have the swing
of everyday talk but content well above normal.

First, screen dialogue requires compression and economy.
Screen dialogue must say the maximum in the fewest possible
words. Second, it must have direction. Each exchange of dialogue
must turn the beats of the scene in one direction or another across
the changing behaviors, without repetition. Third, it should have
purpose. Each line or exchange of dialogue executes a step in
design that builds and arcs the scene around its Turning Point. All
this precision, yet it must sound like talk, using an informal and
natural vocabulary, complete with contractions, slang, even, if nec¬
essary, profanity. “Speak as common people do," Aristotle advised,
“but think as wise men do.”

Remember, film is not a novel; dialogue is spoken and gone. If
words aren't grasped the instant they leave the actor’s mouth,
annoyed people suddenly whisper, “What did he say?" Nor is film
theatre. We watch a movie; we hear a play. The aesthetics of film
are 80 percent visual, 20 percent auditory. We want to see, not hear
as our energies go to our eyes, only half-listening to the soundtrack.
Theatre is 80 percent auditory, 20 percent visual. Our concentra¬
tion is directed through our ears, only half-looking at the stage. The
playwright may spin elaborate and ornate dialogue—but not the
screenwriter. Screen dialogue demands short, simply constructed
sentences—generally, a movement from noun to verb to object or
from noun to verb to complement in that order.

Not, for example: “Mr. Charles Wilson Evans, the chief finan¬
cial officer at Data Corporation in the 666 building on Fifth
Avenue in Manhattan, who was promoted to that position six years
ago, having graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Business
School, was arrested today, accused by the authorities of embezzle¬
ment from the company’s pension fund and fraud in his efforts to
conceal the losses." But with a polish: “You know Charlie Evans?
CFO at Data Corp? Ha! Got busted. Had his fist in the till. Harvard
grad ought to know how to steal and get away with it.” The same
ideas broken into a series of short, simply constructed, informally
spoken sentences, and bit by bit the audience gets it.

390 + ROBERT MCKEE

Dialogue doesn't require complete sentences. We don’t always
bother with a noun or a verb. Typically, as above, we drop the
opening article or pronoun, speaking in phrases, even grunts.

Read your dialogue out loud or, better yet, into a tape recorder
to avoid tongue twisters or accidental rhymes and alliterations such
as: “They're moving their car over there.” Never write anything that
calls attentions to itself as dialogue, anything that jumps off the
page and shouts: “Oh, what a clever line am I!” The moment you
think you’ve written something that’s particularly fine and lit¬
erary—cut it.

Short Speeches

The essence of screen dialogue is what was known in Classical
Greek theatre as stikomythia —the rapid exchange of short
speeches. Long speeches are antithetical with the aesthetics of
cinema. A column of dialogue from top to bottom of a page asks
the camera to dwell on an actor’s face for a talking minute. Watch a
second hand crawl around the face of a clock for a full sixty seconds
and you’ll realize that a minute is a long time. Within ten or fifteen
seconds the audience’s eye absorbs everything visually expressive
and the shot becomes redundant. It’s the same effect as a stuck
record repeating the same note over and over. When the eye is
bored, it leaves the screen; when it leaves the screen, you lose the
audience.

The literary ambitious often shrug this problem off, thinking
the editor can break up long speeches by cutting to the listening
face. But this only introduces new problems. Now an actor is
speaking offscreen, and when we disembody a voice, the actor
must slow down and overarticulate because the audience, in effect,
lip-reads. Fifty percent of its understanding of what is being said
comes from watching it being said. When the face disappears it
stops listening. So offscreen speakers must carefully spit out words
in the hope the audience won’t miss them. What’s more, a voice
offscreen loses the subtext of the speaker. The audience has the
subtext of the listener, but that may not be what it’s interested in.

THE TEXT ♦ 39 I

Therefore, be very judicious about writing long speeches. If,
however, you feel that it's true to the moment for one character to
carry all the dialogue while another remains silent, write the long
speech, but as you do, remember that there's no such thing in life
as a monologue. Life is dialogue, action/reaction.

If, as an actor, I have a long speech that begins when another
character enters and my first line is “You’ve kept me waiting,” how
do I know what to say next until I see the reaction to my first
words? If the other character's reaction is apologetic, his head goes
down in embarrassment, that softens my next action and colors my
lines accordingly. If, however, the other actor's reaction is antago¬
nistic, as he shoots me a dirty look, that may color my next lines
with anger. How does anyone know from moment to moment
what to say or do next until he senses the reaction to what he just
did? He doesn’t know. Life is always action/reaction. No mono¬
logues. No prepared speeches. An improvisation no matter how we
mentally rehearse our big moments.

Therefore, show us that you understand film aesthetics by
breaking long speeches into the patterns of action/reaction that
shape the speaker’s behavior. Fragment the speech with silent reac¬
tions that cause the speaker to change the beat, such as this from
AMADEUS as Salieri confesses to a priest:

SALIERI

All I ever wanted was to sing
to God. He gave me that
longing. And then made me
mute. Why? Tell me that.

The Priest looks away, pained and embarrassed, so Salieri
answers his own question rhetorically:

SALIERI

If he didn’t want me to praise
Him with music, why implant
the desire . . . like a lust in

39 2 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

my body and then deny me
the talent?

Or put parentheticals within dialogue for the same effect, such
as this from later in the scene:

SALIERI

You under stand, I was in love
with the girl . . .

(amused by his own
choice of words)

... or at least in lust.

(seeing the priest
look down at a
crucifix held in his
lap)

But I swear to you, I never
laid a finger on her. Ho.

(as the priest looks
up, solemn, judg¬
mental)

All the same, I couldn’t bear
to think of anyone else
touching her.

(angered at the
thought of Mozart)

Least of all . . . the creature.

A character can react to himself, to his own thoughts and emo¬
tions, as does Salieri above. That too is part of the scene’s
dynamics. Demonstrating on the page the action/reaction patterns
within characters, between characters, between characters and the
physical world projects the sensation of watching a film into the
reader’s imagination and makes the reader understand that yours
is not a film of talking heads.

THE TEXT + 393

The Suspense Sentence

In ill-written dialogue useless words, especially prepositional phrases,
float to the ends of sentences. Consequently, meaning sits some¬
where in the middle, but the audience has to listen to those last
empty words and for that second or two they’re bored. What’s more,
the actor across the screen wants to take his cue from that meaning
but has to wait awkwardly until the sentence is finished. In life, we
cut each other off, slicing the wiggling tails off each other's sen¬
tences, letting everyday conversation tumble. This is yet another
reason why in production actors and directors rewrite dialogue, as
they trim speeches to lift the scene’s energy and make the cueing
rhythm pop.

Excellent film dialogue tends to shape itself into the periodic
sentence: "If you didn’t want me to do it, why’d you give me
that. . Look? Gun? Kiss? The periodic sentence is the “suspense
sentence.” Its meaning is delayed until the very last word, forcing
both actor and audience to listen to the end of the line. Read again
Peter Shaffer’s superb dialogue above and note that virtually every
single line is a suspense sentence.

The Silent Screenplay

The best advice for writing film dialogue is don't. Never write a line of
dialogue when you can create a visual expression. The first attack on
every scene should be: How could I write this in a purely visual way
and not have to resort to a single line of dialogue? Obey the Law of
Diminishing Returns: The more dialogue you write, the less effect dia¬
logue has. If you write speech after speech, walking characters into
rooms, sitting them in chairs and talking, talking, talking, moments of
quality dialogue are buried under this avalanche of words. But if you
write for the eye, when the dialogue comes, as it must, it sparks
interest because the audience is hungry for it. Lean dialogue, in relief
against what’s primarily visual, has salience and power.

THE SILENCE: Ester and Anna (Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel
Lindblom) are sisters living in a lesbian and rather sadomasochistic

394 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

relationship. Ester is seriously ill with tuberculosis. Anna is
bisexual, has an illegitimate child, and enjoys tormenting her older
sister. They’re traveling home to Sweden, and the film takes place
in a hotel during their journey. Bergman has written a scene in
which Anna goes down to the hotel restaurant and allows herself to
be seduced by a waiter in order to provoke her sister with this after¬
noon affair. The “waiter seduces the customer” scene . . . how
would you write it?

Does the waiter open a menu and recommend certain items?
Ask her if she’s staying at the hotel? Traveling far? Compliment her
on how she’s dressed? Ask her if she knows the city? Mention he’s
getting off work and would love to show her the sights? Talk, talk . . .

Here's what Bergman gave us: The waiter walks to the table
and accidentally on purpose drops the napkin on the floor. As he
bends to pick it up, he slowly sniffs and smells Anna from head to
crotch to foot. She, in reaction, draws a long, slow, almost delirious
breath. CUT TO: They’re in a hotel room. Perfect, isn’t it? Erotic,
purely visual, not a word said or necessary. That’s screenwriting.

Alfred Hitchcock once remarked, “When the screenplay has
been written and the dialogue has been added, we’re ready to shoot.”

Image is our first choice, dialogue the regretful second choice.
Dialogue is the last layer we add to the screenplay. Make no mis¬
take, we all love great dialogue, but less is more. When a highly
imagistic film shifts to dialogue, it crackles with excitement and
delights the ear.

DESCRIPTION

Putting a Film in the Reader's Head

Pity the poor screenwriter, for he cannot be a poet. He cannot use
metaphor and simile, assonance and alliteration, rhythm and
rhyme, synecdoche and metonymy, hyperbole and meiosis, the
grand tropes. Instead, his work must contain all the substance of
literature but not be literary. A literary work is finished and com¬
plete within itself. A screenplay waits for the camera. If not litera-

THE TEXT + 395

ture, what then is the screenwriter's ambition? To describe in such
a way that as the reader turns pages, a film flows through the imag¬
ination.

No small task. The first step is to recognize exactly what it is we
describe—the sensation of looking at the screen. Ninety percent of
all verbal expression has no filmic equivalent. “He’s been sitting
there for a long time” can’t be photographed. So we constantly dis¬
cipline the imagination with this question: What do I see on the
screen? Then describe only what is photographic: Perhaps “He
stubs out his tenth cigarette,” “He nervously glances at his watch,”
or “He yawns, trying to stay awake” to suggest waiting a long time.

Vivid Action in the Now

The ontology of the screen is an absolute present tense in constant
vivid movement. We write screenplay in the present tense because,
unlike the novel, film is on the knife edge of the now—whether we
flash back or forward, we jump to a new now. And the screen
expresses relentless action. Even static shots have a sense of alive-
ness, because although the imagery may not move, the audience’s
eye constantly travels the screen, giving stationary images energy.
And, unlike life, film is vivid. Occasionally, our daily routine may be
broken by light glinting off a building, flowers in a shop window, or
a woman's face in the crowd. But as we walk through our days we’re
more inside our heads than out, half-seeing, half-hearing the world.
The screen, however, is intensely vivid for hours on end.

On the page vividness springs from the names of the things.
Nouns are the names of objects; verbs the names of actions. To
write vividly, avoid generic nouns and verbs with adjectives and
adverbs attached and seek the name of the thing: Not “The car¬
penter uses a big nail,” but “The carpenter hammers a spike” “Nail”
is a generic noun, “big” an adjective. The solid, Anglo-Saxon “spike”
pops a vivid image in the reader’s mind, “nail” a blur. How big?

The same applies to verbs. A typical line of nondescription: “He
starts to move slowly across the room.” How does somebody “start”
across a room on film? The character either crosses or takes a step and

396 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

stops. And "move slowly”? “Slowly” is an adverb; “move” a vague,
bland verb. Instead, name the action: “He pads across the room.” “He
(ambles, strolls, moseys, saunters, drags himself, staggers, waltzes,
glides, lumbers, tiptoes, creeps, slouches, shuffles, waddles, minces,
trudges, teeters, lurches, gropes, hobbles) across the room.” All are
slow but each vivid and distinctively different from the others.

Eliminate “is” and “are” throughout. Onscreen nothing is in a
state of being; story life is an unending flux of change, of becoming.
Not: “There is a big house on a hill above a small town.” “There is,”
“They are,” “It is,” “He/She is” are the weakest possible ways into
any English sentence. And what's a “big house”? Chateau?
Hacienda? A “hill”? Ridge? Bluff? A “small town”? Crossroads?
Hamlet? Perhaps: “A mansion guards the headlands above the vil¬
lage.” With a Hemingwayesque shunning of Latinate and abstrate
terms, of adjectives and adverbs, in favor of the most specific, active
verbs and concrete nouns possible, even establishing shots come
alive. Fine film description requires an imagination and a vocabulary.

Eliminate all metaphor and simile that cannot pass this test:
“What do I see (or hear) onscreen?” As Milos Forman observed, “In
film, a tree is a tree.” “As if,” for example, is a trope that doesn’t
exist onscreen. A character doesn't come through a door “as if.” He
comes through the door—period. The metaphor “A mansion
guards . . .” and simile “The door slams like a gunshot. . .” pass
the test in that a mansion can be photographed from a foreground
angle that gives the impression it shelters or guards a village below
it; a door slam can crack the ear like a gunshot. In fact, in
MISSING the sound effects of all door slams were done with gun¬
shots to subliminally increase tension as the conscious mind hears
a door slam but the unconscious reacts to a gunshot.

These, on the other hand, were found in submissions to the
European Script Fund: “The sun sets like a tiger’s eye closing in
the jungle,” and, “The road twists and knifes and gouges its way up
the hillside, struggling until it reaches the rim, then disappears out
of sight before bursting onto the horizon.” They are director traps,
seductive but unphotographable. Although the European writers of
these passages lack screenwriting discipline, they are ingenuously

THE TEXT 4 397

trying to be expressive; whereas American writers, out of cynicism
and laziness, often resort to sarcasm:

“BENNY, in his thirties, is a small, muscular Englishman with
an air of mania that suggests that, at least once in his life, he’s
bitten the head off a chicken.” And, “You guessed it. Here comes
the sex scene. I’d write it, but my mother reads these things.”
Amusing, but that’s what these writers want us to think so we don’t
notice that they can’t or won’t write. They’ve resorted to bald telling
masked by sarcasm because they haven't the craft, talent, or pride
to create a scene that acts out the simplest of ideas.

Eliminate “we see” and “we hear.” “We” doesn't exist. Once
into the story ritual, the theatre could be empty for all we care.
Instead, “We see” injects an image of the crew looking through the
lens and shatters the script reader’s vision of the film.

Eliminate all camera and editing notations. In the same way
actors ignore behavioral description, directors laugh at RACK
FOCUS TO, PAN TO, TIGHT TWO SHOT ON, and all other
efforts to direct the film from the page. If you write TRACK ON,
does the reader see a film flowing through his imagination? No.
He now sees a film being made. Delete CUT TO, SMASH CUT TO,
LAP DISSOLVE TO, and other transitions. The reader assumes
that all changes of angle are done on a cut.

The contemporary screenplay is a Master Scene work that
includes only those angles absolutely necessary to the telling of the
story and no more. For example:

INT. DINING ROOM—DAY

Jack enters, dropping his briefcase on the antique chair next
to the door. He notices a note propped up on the dining room
table. Strolling over, he picks up the note, tears it open, and
reads. Then crumpling the note, he drops into a chair, head in
hands.

If the audience knows the contents of the note from a pre¬
vious scene, then the description stays on Jack reading

39 & ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

and slumping into a chair. If, however, it’s vital that the
audience read the note with Jack or it wouldn’t be able
follow the story, then:

INT. DINING ROOM—DAY

Jack enters, dropping his briefcase on the antique chair next
to the door. He notices a note propped up on the dining room
table. Strolling over, he picks it up and tears it open.

INSERT NOTE:

Calligraphic handwriting reads: Jack, I’ve packed and left. Do
not try to contact me. I have a lawyer. She will be in touch.
Barbara

ON SCENE

Jack crumples the note and drops into a chair, head in hands.

Another example: If, as Jack sits, head in hands, he were
to hear a car pull outside and hurry to a window, and it’s
critical to audience comprehension that they see what
Jack sees at that moment, then continuing from above:

ON SCENE

Jack crumples the note and drops into a chair, head in hands.
Suddenly, a car PULLS UP outside. He hurries to the window.
JACK’S POV

through the curtains to the curb. Barbara gets out of her sta¬
tion wagon, opens the hatch and takes out suitcases.

THE TEXT « 399

OH JACK

turning from the window, hurling Barbara’s note across the room.

If, however, the audience would assume that car pulling
up is Barbara coming back to Jack because she’s done it
twice before and Jack’s angry reaction says it all, then the
description would stay on the Master Shot of Jack in the
dining room.

Beyond the essential storytelling angles, however, the
Master Scene screenplay gives the writer a strong influence
on the film’s direction. Instead of labeling angles, the writer
suggests them by breaking single-spaced paragraphs into
units of description with images and language subtly indi¬
cating camera distance and composition. For example:

INT. DINIHG ROOM—DAY

Jack enters and looks around the empty room. Lifting his
briefcase above his head, he drops it with a THUMP on the
fragile, antique chair next to the door. He listens. Silence.

Pleased with himself, he ambles for the kitchen, when sud¬
denly he’s brought up short.

A note with his name on it sits propped against the rose-filled
vase on the dinning table.

Nervously he twists his wedding ring.

Taking a breath, he strolls over, picks up the note, tears it
open, and reads.

Rather than writing the above into a thick block of single
spaced prose, lines of white split it into five units that suggest in

400 4 ROBERT MCKEE

order: A wide angle covering most of the room, a moving shot
through the room, a close-up on the note, an even tighter close-up
on Jack’s ring finger, and a medium follow-shot to the table.

The briefcase insult to Barbara’s antique chair and Jack’s ner¬
vous gesture with his wedding ring express his shifts of feeling.
Actor and director are always free to improvise new business of
their own, but the miniparagraphs lead the reader’s inner eye
through a pattern of action/reaction between Jack and the room,
Jack and his emotions, Jack and his wife as represented in her note.
That’s the life of the scene. Now director and actor must capture it
under the influence of this pattern. How exactly will be their creative
tasks. In the meantime, the effect of the Master Scene technique is a
readability that translates into the sensation of watching a film.

IMAGE SYSTEMS

The Screenwriter As Poet

“Pity the poor screenwriter, for he cannot be a poet” is not in fact
true. Film is a magnificent medium for the poet’s soul, once the
screenwriter understands the nature of story poetics and its work¬
ings within a film.

Poetic does not mean pretty. Decorative images of the kind that
send audiences out of disappointing films muttering “but it’s beau¬
tifully photographed” are not poetic. THE SHELTERING SKY: Its
human content is aridity, a desperate meaninglessness—what was
once called an existential crisis, and the novel’s desert setting was
metaphor for the barrenness of the protagonists’ lives. The film,
however, glowed with the postcard glamour of a tourist agency trav¬
elogue, and little or nothing of the suffering at its heart could be
felt. Pretty pictures are appropriate if the subject is pretty: THE
SOUND OF MUSIC.

Rather, poetic means an enhanced expressivity. Whether a story’s
content is beautiful or grotesque, spiritual or profane, quietistic or
violent, pastoral or urban, epic or intimate, it wants full expression.
A good story well told, well directed and acted, and perhaps a good

THE TEXT 4 401

film. All that plus an enrichment and deepening of the work’s
expressivity through its poetics, and perhaps a great film.

To begin with, as audience in the ritual of story, we react to
every image, visual or auditory, symbolically. We instinctively sense
that each object has been selected to mean more than itself and so
we add a connotation to every denotation. When an automobile
pulls into a shot, our reaction is not a neutral thought such as
“vehicle”; we give it a connotation. We think, “Huh. Mercedes . . .
rich. Or, “Lamborghini. . . foolishly rich.” “Rusted-out Volkswagen
. . . artist.” “Harley-Davidson . . . dangerous.” “Red Trans-Am . . .
problems with sexual identity." The storyteller then builds on this
natural inclination in the audience.

The first step in turning a well-told story into a poetic work is to
exclude 90 percent of reality. The vast majority of objects in the
world have the wrong connotations for any specific film. So the
spectrum of possible imagery must be sharply narrowed to those
objects with appropriate implications.

In production, for example, if a director wants a vase added to a
shot, this prompts an hour’s discussion, and a critical one. What
kind of vase? What period? What shape? Color? Ceramic, metal,
wood? Are there flowers in it? What kind? Where located? Fore¬
ground? Mid-ground? Background? Upper left of the shot? Lower
right? In or out of focus? Is it lit? Is it touched as a prop? Because
this isn’t just a vase, it’s a highly charged, symbolic object res¬
onating meaning to every other object in the shot and forward and
backward through the film. Like all works of art, a film is a unity in
which every object relates to every other image or object.

Limited to what’s appropriate, the writer then empowers the film
with an Image System, or systems, for there are often more than one.

An IMAGE SYSTEM is a strategy of motifs, a category of
imagery embedded in the film that repeats in sight and
sound from beginning to end with persistence and great
variation, but with equally great subtlety, as a subliminal
communication to increase the depth and complexity of
aesthetic emotion.

402 4 ROBERT MCKEE

“Category” means a subject drawn from the physical world that's
broad enough to contain sufficient variety. For example, a dimension
of nature—animals, the seasons, light and dark—or a dimension of
human culture—buildings, machines, art. This category must repeat
because one or two isolated symbols have little effect. But the power
of an organized return of images is immense, as variety and repeti¬
tion drive the Image System to the seat of the audience's uncon¬
scious. Yet, and most important, a film’s poetics must be handled with
virtual invisibility and go consciously unrecognized.

An Image System is created one of two ways, via External or
Internal Imagery. External Imagery takes a category that outside the
film already has a symbolic meaning and brings it in to mean the
same thing in the film it means outside the film: for example, to use
the national flag—a symbol of patriotism and love of country—to
mean patriotism, love of country. In ROCKY IV, for example, after
Rocky defeats the Russian boxer, he wraps himself in a massive
American flag. Or to use a crucifix, a symbol of love of God and reli¬
gious feelings, to mean love of God, religious feelings; a spider’s
web to mean entrapment; a teardrop to mean sadness. External
Imagery, I must point out, is the hallmark of the student film.

Internal Imagery takes a category that outside the film may or
may not have a symbolic meaning attached but brings it into the
film to give it an entirely new meaning appropriate to this film and
this film alone.

LES DIABOLIQUE: In 1955 director/screenwriter Henri-
Georges Clouzot adapted Pierre Boileau’s novel, Celle Qui N'etait
Pas to the screen. In it Christina (Vera Clouzot) is an attractive
young woman but very shy, quiet, and sensitive. She has suffered
from a heart condition since childhood and is never in the best of
health. Years before she inherited an impressive estate in the sub¬
urbs of Paris that has been turned into an exclusive boarding
school. She runs this school with her husband, Michel (Paul
Meurisse), a sadistic, abusive, malignant bastard who delights in
treating his wife like dirt. He’s having an affair with one of the
school’s teachers, Nicole (Simone Signoret), and he’s as vicious
and cruel to his mistress as he is to his wife.

THE TEXT + 403

Everybody knows about this affair. In fact, the two women have
become best friends, both suffering under the heel of this brute.
Early in the film they decide that the only way out of their problem
is to kill him.

One night they lure Michel to an apartment in a village well
away from the school where they've secretly filled a bathtub full of
water. He comes in, dressed in his three-piece suit, and arrogantly
taunts and insults his two women while they get him as drunk as
they possibly can, then try to drown him in the bathtub. But he's
not that drunk and it’s a hell of a struggle. The terror nearly kills
the poor wife, but Nicole rushes into the living room and grabs a
ceramic statue of a panther from the coffee table. She loads this
heavy thing on the man’s chest. Between the weight of the statue
and her own strength she manages to hold him down under the
water long enough to drown him.

The women wrap the body in a tarp, hide it in the back of a
pickup truck, and sneak back to the campus in the middle of the
night. The school’s swimming pool hasn’t been used all winter; an
inch of algae covers the water. The women dump the body in and it
submerges out of sight. They quickly retire and wait for the next
day when the body will float up and be discovered. But the next day
comes and goes and the body does not float up. Days go by and the
body will not float up.

Finally, Nicole accidentally on purpose drops her car keys in
the pool and asks one of the older students to retrieve them. The
kid dives down under the scum and searches and searches and
searches. He comes up, gulps some air, then goes down again and
searches and searches and searches. He comes up to gulp air, then
goes down a third time and searches and searches and searches. At
last he surfaces . . . with the car keys.

The women then decide it’s time to clean the swimming pool.
They order the pool drained and stand at its edge, watching as the
scum goes down and down and down and down ... to the drain.
But there is no body. That afternoon a dry cleaner's van drives out
from Paris to deliver the cleaned and pressed suit that the man
died in. The women rush into Paris to the cleaners where they find

404 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

a receipt, and on it is the address of a boardinghouse. They head
there and talk to a concierge who says, “Yes, yes, there was a man
living here but... he moved this morning.”

They go back to the school and even more bizarre things
happen: Michel appears and disappears in the windows of the
school. When they look at the senior class graduation photo, there
he is standing behind the students, slightly out of focus. They can't
imagine what's going on. Is he a ghost? Did he somehow survive
the drowning and he’s doing this to us? Did someone else find the
body? Are they doing this?

Summer vacation comes and all the students and teachers
leave. Then Nicole herself departs. She packs her bags, saying she
can’t take this anymore, abandoning the poor wife alone.

That evening Christina can’t sleep; she sits up in bed, wide
awake, her heart pounding. Suddenly in the dead of night she
hears the sound of typing coming from her husband’s office. She
slowly gets up and edges down a long corridor, hand on her heart,
but just as she touches the office doorknob, the typing stops.

She eases open the door and there, alongside the typewriter,
are her husband’s gloves . . . like two huge hands. Then she hears
the most terrifying sound imaginable: dripping water. Now she
heads toward the bathroom off the office, her heart raging. She
creaks open the bathroom door and there he is—still in his three-
piece suit, submerged in a bathtub full of water, the faucet drip-
ping.

The body sits up, water cascades off. Its eyes open but there are
no eyeballs. Hands reach out for her, she grabs her chest, has a
fatal heart attack, and drops dead on the floor. Michel reaches
under his eyelids and removes white plastic inserts. Nicole jumps
out of a closet. They embrace and whisper, “We did it!”

The opening titles of LES DIABOLIQUE look as if they’re over
an abstract painting of grays and blacks. But suddenly, as titles end,
a truck tire splashes from bottom to top of the screen and we
realize we’ve been looking at the top angle view of a mud puddle.
The camera comes up on a rainy landscape. From this first
moment on, Image System “water” is continually and subliminally

THE TEXT + 405

repeated. It’s always drizzly and foggy. Condensation on windows
runs in little drops to the sills. At dinner they eat fish. Characters
drink wine and tea while Christina sips her heart medicine. When
the teachers discuss summer vacation, they talk of going to the
South of France to “take the waters.” Swimming pool, bathtubs . . .
it's one of the dampest films ever made.

Outside this film water is a universal symbol of all things posi¬
tive: sanctification, purification, the feminine—archetype for life
itself. But Clouzot reverses these values until water takes on the
power of death, terror, and evil, and the sound of a dripping faucet
brings the audience up out of its seats.

CASABLANCA weaves three Image Systems. Its primary motifs
create a sense of imprisonment as the city of Casablanca becomes a
virtual penitentiary. Characters whisper their “escape” plans as if the
police were prison guards. The beacon on the airport tower moves
through the streets like a searchlight scanning a prison compound,
while window blinds, room dividers, stair railings, even the leaves of
potted palms create shadows like the bars of prison cells.

The second system builds a progression from the particular to
the archetypal. Casablanca starts as a refugee center but becomes a
mini-United Nations filled with not only Arab and European faces
but Asian and African ones as well. Rick and his friend Sam are the
only Americans we meet. Repeated images, including dialogue in
which characters speak to Rick as if he were a country, associate
Rick to America until he comes to symbolize America itself and
Casablanca the world. Like the United States in 1941 Rick is stead¬
fastly neutral, wanting no part in yet another World War. His con¬
version to the fight subliminally congratulates America for finally
taking sides against tyranny.

The third system is one of linking and separating. A number of
images and compositions within the frame are used to link Rick and
lisa, making the subliminal point that although these two are apart,
they belong together. The counterpoint to this is a series of images
and compositional designs that separate lisa from Laszlo, giving the
opposite impression that although these two are together, they
belong apart.

406 4 ROBERT MCKEE

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY is a multiplot film with six
story lines—three positive climaxes devoted to the father, three
negative endings to his daughter—in a point/counterpoint design
that interweaves no fewer than four Image Systems. The father’s
stories are marked by open spaces, light, intellect, and verbal com¬
munication; the daughter’s conflicts are expressed in closed spaces,
darkness, animal images, and sexuality.

CHINATOWN also employs four systems, two of External
Imagery, two of Internal Imagery. The primary internalized system
is motifs of “blind seeing” or seeing falsely: Windows; rearview
mirrors; eyeglasses, and particularly broken spectacles; cameras;
binoculars; eyes themselves, and even the open, unseeing eyes of
the dead, all gather tremendous forces to suggest that if we are
looking for evil out in the world, we’re looking in the wrong direc¬
tion. It is in here. In us. As Mao Tse-tung once said, “History is the
symptom, we are the disease.”

The second internalized system takes political corruption and
turns it into social cement. False contracts, subverted laws, and acts
of corruption become that which hold society together and create
“progress.” Two systems of External Imagery, water versus drought
and sexual cruelty versus sexual love have conventional connota¬
tions but are used with a sharp-edged effectiveness.

When ALIEN was released Time magazine ran a ten-page
article with stills and drawings asking the question: Has Hollywood
gone too far? For this film incorporates a highly erotic Image
System and contains three vivid “rape” scenes.

When Gail Anne Hurd and James Cameron made the sequel,
ALIENS, they not only switched genres from Horror to
Action)Adventure, they reinvented the Image System to motherhood
as Ripley becomes the surrogate mother of the child Newt (Carrie
Henn), who in turn is the surrogate mother of her broken doll. The
two are up against the most terrifying “mother” in the universe, the
gigantic monster queen who lays her eggs in a womblike nest. In
dialogue, Ripley remarks, “The monsters make you pregnant.”

AFTER HOURS works on only one internalized refrain but
with a rich variety: Art. But not as the ornament of life. Rather, art

THE TEXT + 407

as a weapon. The art and artists of Manhattan's Soho district con¬
stantly assault the protagonist, Paul (Griffin Dunne), until he's
encapsulated inside a work of art and stolen by Cheech and Chong.

Going back through the decades, Hitchcock’s Thrillers combine
images of religiosity with sexuality, while John Ford’s Westerns
counterpoint wilderness with civilization. In fact, traveling back
through the centuries we realize that Image Systems are as old as
story itself. Homer invented beautiful motifs for his epics, as did
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides for their plays. Shakespeare
submerged a unique Image System into each of his works, as did
Melville, Poe, Tolstoy, Dickens, Orwell, Hemingway, Ibsen, Chekhov,
Shaw, Beckett—all great novelists and playwrights have embraced
this principle.

And who, after all, invented screenwriting? Novelists and play¬
wrights who came to the cradles of our art in Hollywood, London,
Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, and Moscow to write the scenarios of silent
films. Film’s first major directors, such as D. W. Griffith, Eisen-
stein, and Murnau, did their apprenticeship in the theatre; they too
realized that, like a fine play, a film can be taken to the sublime by
the repetition of a subliminal poetics.

And an Image System must be subliminal. The audience is not
to be aware of it. Years ago as I watched Bunuel’s VIRIDIANA, I
noticed that Bunuel had introduced an Image System of rope; A
child jump ropes, a rich man hangs himself with a rope, a poor
man uses rope as a belt. About the fifth time a piece of rope came
on the screen the audience shouted in unison, “Symbol!”

Symbolism is powerful, more powerful than most realize, as
long as it bypasses the conscious mind and slips into the uncon¬
scious. As it does while we dream. The use of symbolism follows
the same principle as scoring a film. Sound doesn’t need cognition,
so music can deeply affect us when we’re unconscious of it. In the
same way, symbols touch us and move us —as long as we don't rec¬
ognize them as symbolic. Awareness of a symbol turns it into a neu¬
tral, intellectual curiosity, powerless and virtually meaningless.

Why, then, do so many contemporary writer/directors label
their symbols? The hamhanded treatment of “symbolic” images in

408 4 ROBERT MCKEE

the remake of CAPE FEAR, BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, and
THE PIANO, to name three of the more barefaced examples. I can
think of two likely reasons: First, to flatter the elite audience of self-
perceived intellectuals that watches at a safe, unemotional distance
while collecting ammunition for the postfilm ritual of cafe criti¬
cism. Second, to influence, if not control, critics and the reviews
they write. Declamatory symbolism requires no genius, just ego¬
tism ignited by misreadings of Jung and Derrida. It is a vanity that
demeans and corrupts the art.

Some argue that the film's Image System is the director’s work
and that he or she alone should create it. And I’ve no argument
with that, for ultimately the director is responsible for every square
inch of every shot in the film. Except. . . how many working direc¬
tors understand what I’ve explained above? Few. Perhaps two
dozen in the world today. Just the very best, while, unfortunately,
the vast majority cannot tell the difference between decorative and
expressive photography.

I argue that the screenwriter should begin the film’s Image
System and the director and designers finish it. It’s the writer who
first envisions the ground of all imagery, the story’s physical and
social world. Often, as we write, we discover that spontaneously
we’ve already begun the work, that a pattern of imagery has found
its way into our descriptions and dialogue. As we become aware of
that, we devise variations and quietly embroider them into the story.
If an Image System doesn’t arrive on its own, we invent one. The
audience won’t care how we do it; it only wants the story to work.

TITLES

A film’s title is the marketing centerpiece that “positions” the audi¬
ence, preparing it for the experience ahead. Screenwriters, there¬
fore, cannot indulge in literary, nontitle titles: TESTAMENT, for
example, is actually a film about postnuclear holocaust; LOOKS
AND SMILES portrays desolate lives on welfare. My favorite non¬
title tile is MOMENT BY MOMENT. MOMENT BY MOMENT is
the working title I always use until I figure out the title.

THE TEXT « 409

To title means to name. An effective title points to something
solid that is actually in the story—character, setting, theme, or
genre. The best titles often name two or all elements at once.

JAWS names a character, sets the story in the wilds, and gives
us the theme, man against nature, in the Action(Adventure genre.
KRAMER VS. KRAMER names two characters, a divorce theme,
and Domestic Drama. STAR WARS titles an epic conflict of galactic
warriors. PERSONA suggests a cast of psychologically troubled
characters and a theme of hidden identities. LA DOLCE VITA
places us in a decadent setting among the urban rich. MY BEST
FRIEND'S WEDDING establishes characters, setting, and Romantic
Comedy.

A title, of course, isn’t the only marketing consideration. As the
legendary Harry Cohn once observed, “MOGAMBO is a terrible
title. MOGAMBO, starring Clark Gable and Ava Gardner, is a great
f. . . ing title.”

19

A WRITER'S METHOD

Professional writers may or may not receive critical acclaim, but
they’re in control of the craft, have access to their talent, improve
their performance over the years, and make a living from the art. A
struggling writer may at times produce quality, but from day to day
he cannot make his talent perform when and as he wants, doesn’t
progress in quality from story to story, and receives little, if any,
income from his efforts. On the whole, the difference between
those who succeed and those who struggle is their opposed
methods of work: inside out versus outside in.

WRITING FROM THE OUTSIDE IN

The struggling writer tends to have a way of working that goes
something like this: He dreams up an idea, noodles on it for a
while, then rushes straight to the keyboard:

EXT. HOUSE—DAY

Description, description, description. Characters A and B enter.

CHARACTER A
Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.

410

CHARACTER B
Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.

A WRITER'S METHOD * 411

Description, description, description, description, description.

He imagines and writes, writes and dreams until he reaches
page 120 and stops. Then he hands out Xerox copies to friends and
back come their reactions: “Oh, it’s nice, and I love that scene in
the garage when they threw paint all over each other, was that
funny or what? And when the little kid came down at night in his
pajamas, how sweet! The scene on the beach was so romantic, and
when the car blew up, exciting. But I don’t know . . . there’s some¬
thing about the ending . . . and the middle . . . and the way it starts
. . . that just doesn’t work for me.’’

So the struggling writer gathers friends’ reactions and his own
thoughts to start the second draft with this strategy: “How can I
keep the six scenes that I love and that everyone else loves and
somehow pretzel this film through them in a way that’ll work?”
With a little more thought he’s back at the keyboard:

INT. HOUSE—NIGHT

Description, description, description. Characters A and C enter
while Character B watches from hiding.

CHARACTER A
Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.

CHARACTER C
Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.

Description, description, description, description, description.

He imagines and writes, writes and dreams, but all the while
he clings like a drowning man to his favorite scenes until a rewrite
comes out the other end. He makes copies and hands them out to
friends and back come reactions: “It’s different, decidedly different.
But I’m so glad you kept that scene in the garage and with the kid
in his pajamas and the car on the beach . . . great scenes. But . . .

412 4 ROBERT MCKEE

there’s still something about that ending and the middle and the
way it starts that just doesn't work for me.”

The writer then does a third draft and a fourth and a fifth but the
process is always the same: He dings to his favorite scenes, twisting a
new telling through them in hopes of finding a story that works.
Finally a year’s gone by and he’s burned out. He dedares the screen¬
play perfect and hands it to his agent, who reads it without enthu¬
siasm, but because he’s an agent, he does what he must. He too makes
copies, papers Hollywood, and back come reader reports: “Very nicely
written, good crisp, actable dialogue, vivid scene description, fine atten¬
tion to detail, the story sucks. PASS ON IT.” The writer blames the
Philistine tastes of Hollywood and gears up for his next project.

WRITING FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Successful writers tend to use the reverse process. If, hypothetically
and optimistically, a screenplay can be written from first idea to last
draft in six months, these writers typically spend the first four of
those six months writing on stacks of three-by-five cards: a stack for
each act—three, four, perhaps more. On these cards they create
the story’s step-outline.

Step-Outline

As the term implies, a step-outline is the story told in steps.

Using one- or two-sentence statements, the writer simply and
clearly describes what happens in each scene, how it builds and
turns. For example: “He enters expecting to find her at home, but
instead discovers her note saying she’s left for good.”

On the back of each card the writer indicates what step in the
design of the story he sees this scene fulfilling—at least for the
moment. Which scenes set up the Inciting Incident? Which is the
Inciting Incident? First Act Climax? Perhaps a Mid-Act Climax?
Second Act? Third? Fourth? Or more? He does this for Central Plot
and subplots alike.

He confines himself to a few stacks of cards for months on end

A WRITER'S METHOD + 413

for this critical reason: He wants to destroy his work. Taste and
experience tell him that 90 percent of everything he writes, regard¬
less of his genius, is mediocre at best. In his patient search for
quality, he must create far more material than he can use, then
destroy it. He may sketch a scene a dozen different ways before
finally throwing the idea of the scene out of the outline. He may
destroy sequences, whole acts. A writer secure in his talent knows
there’s no limit to what he can create, and so he trashes everything
less than his best on a quest for a gem-quality story.

This process, however, doesn’t mean the writer isn’t filling
pages. Day after day a huge stack grows on the side of the desk: but
these are biographies, the fictional world and its history, thematic
notations, images, even snippets of vocabulary and idiom. Research
and imaginings of all kinds fill a file cabinet while the story is disci¬
plined to the step-outline.

Finally, after weeks or months, the writer discovers his Story
Climax. With that in hand, he reworks, as needed, backward from
it. At last he has a story. Now he goes to friends, but not asking for
a day out of their lives—which is what we ask when we want a con¬
scientious person to read a screenplay. Instead he pours a cup of
coffee and asks for ten minutes. Then he pitches his story.

The writer never shows his step-outline to people because it’s a
tool, too cryptic for anyone but the writer to follow. Instead, at this
critical stage, he wants to tell or pitch his story so he can see it
unfold in time, watch it play on the thoughts and feelings of
another human being. He wants to look in that person’s eyes and
see the story happen there. So he pitches and studies the reactions:
Is my friend hooked by my Inciting Incident? Listening and
leaning in? Or are his eyes wandering? Am I holding him as I build
and turn the progressions? And when I hit the Climax, do I get a
strong reaction of the kind I want?

Any story pitched from its step-outline to an intelligent, sensi¬
tive person must be able to grab attention, hold interest for ten
minutes, and pay it off by moving him to a meaningful, emotional
experience—just as my LES DIABOLIQUE pitch hooked, held,
and moved you. Regardless of genre, if a story can’t work in ten

414 ♦ ROBERT MCKEE

minutes, how will it work in no minutes? It won't get better when
it gets bigger. Everything that's wrong with it in a ten-minute pitch
is ten times worse onscreen.

Until a good majority of listeners respond with enthusiasm,
there’s no point going forward. “With enthusiasm” doesn’t mean
people leap up and kiss you on both cheeks, rather they whisper
“Wow” and fall silent. A fine work of art—music, dance, painting,
story—has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us
to another place. When a story, pitched from a step-outline, is so
strong it brings silence—no comments, no criticism, just a look of
pleasure—that's a hell of a thing and time is too precious to waste
on a story that hasn’t that power. Now the writer’s ready to move to
the next stage—the treatment.

Treatment

To “treat” the step-outline, the writer expands each scene from its
one or two sentences to a paragraph or more of double-spaced, pre¬
sent-tense, moment by moment description:

Dining Room—Day Jack walks in and tosses his briefcase on the
chair next to the door. He looks around. The room is empty. He
calls her name. Gets no answer. He calls it again, louder and
louder. Still no answer. As he pads to the kitchen, he sees a note on
the table. Picks it up, reads it. The note says that she has left him
for good. He drops in the chair, head in hands, and starts to cry.

In treatment the writer indicates what characters talk about —

“he wants her to do this, but she refuses," for example—but
never writes dialogue. Instead, he creates the subtext—the true
thoughts and feelings underneath what is said and done. We
may think we know what our characters are thinking and
feeling, but we don't know we know until we write it down:

Dining Room—Day The door opens and Jack leans on the jamb,
exhausted from a day of failed and frustrating work. He looks

A WRITER'S METHOD « 415

around the room, sees she’s not around, and hopes like hell she's
out. He really doesn’t want to have to deal with her today. To be
sure he has the house to himself, he calls her name. Gets no
answer. Calls out louder and louder. Still no answer. Good. He’s
finally alone. He lifts his briefcase high in the air drops it with a
thud onto her precious Chippendale chair next to the door. She
hates him for scratching her antiques but today he doesn’t give a
damn.

Hungry, he heads for the kitchen, but as he crosses the room
he notices a note on the dining-room table. It's one of those damn,
annoying notes that she’s always leaving around, taped to the bath¬
room mirror or the refrigerator or whatever. Irritated, he picks it up
and tears it open. Reading it, he discovers that she’s left him for
good. As his legs go weak, he drops into a chair, a knot twisting in
his gut. His head falls into his hands and he starts to cry. He's sur¬
prised by his outburst, pleased he can still feel some emotion. But
his tears are not grief; they’re the dam breaking with relief that the
relationship is finally over.

• • •

The forty to sixty scenes of a typical screenplay, treated to a
moment by moment description of all action, underlaid with a full
subtext of the conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings of
all characters, will produce sixty, eight, ninety, or more double¬
spaced pages. In the studio system from the 1930s to the 1950s
when producers ordered treatments from writers, they were often
two hundred to three hundred pages long. The strategy of studio
writers was to extract the screenplay from a much larger work so
nothing would be overlooked or unthought.

The ten- or twelve-page "treatments” that pass around show
business today are not treatments but outlines given enough words
that a reader can follow the story. A ten-page outline is not nearly
enough material for a screenplay. Today’s writers may not return to
the vast treatments of the studio system, but when a step-outline is
expanded to a treatment of sixty to ninety pages, creative achieve¬
ment expands correspondingly.

At the treatment stage, we inevitably discover that things we

416 + ROBERT MCKEE

thought would work a certain way in the step-outline now want to
change. Research and imagination never stop, and so the charac¬
ters and their world are still growing and evolving, leading us to
revise any number of scenes. We won't change the overall design
of the story because it worked every time we pitched it. But within
that structure scenes may need to be cut, added, or reordered. We
rework the treatment until every moment lives vividly, in text and
subtext. That done, then and only then does the writer move to the
screenplay itself.

SCREENPLAY

Writing a screenplay from a thorough treatment is a joy and often
runs at a clip of five to ten pages per day. We now convert treatment
description to screen description and add dialogue. And dialogue
written at this point is invariably the finest dialogue we’ve ever
written. Our characters have had tape over their mouths for so long,
they can’t wait to talk, and unlike so many films in which all charac¬
ters speak with the same vocabulary and style, dialogue written after
in-depth preparation creates character-specific voices. They don’t all
sound like one another and they don’t all sound like the writer.

At the first draft stage, changes and revisions will still be needed.
When characters are allowed to speak, scenes in treatment you
thought would work a certain way now want to alter direction. When
you find such a fault, it can rarely be fixed with a simple rewrite of
dialogue or behavior. Rather, you must go back into the treatment
and rework the setups, then perhaps go beyond the faulty scene to
redo the payoff. A number of polishes may be necessary until you
reach the final draft. You must develop your judgment and taste, a
nose for your own bad writing, then call upon a relentless courage to
root out weaknesses and turn them into strengths.

If you shortcut the process and rush straight to screenplay from
outline, the truth is that your first draft is not a screenplay, it’s a
surrogate treatment—a narrow, unexplored, unimprovised, tissue-
thin treatment. Event choice and story design must be given free
rein to consume your imagination and knowledge. Turning Points

A WRITER'S METHOD + 417

must be imagined, discarded, and reimagined, then played out in
text and subtext. Otherwise you have little hope of achieving excel¬
lence. Now, how and when do you want to do that? In treatment or
screenplay? Either may work, but, more often than not, screenplay
is a trap. The wise writer puts off the writing of dialogue for as long
as possible because the premature writing of dialogue chokes creativity.

Writing from the outside in—writing dialogue in search of
scenes, writing scenes in search of story— is the least creative
method. Screenwriters habitually overvalue dialogue because they’re
the only words we write that actually reach the audience. All else is
assumed by the film’s images. If we type out dialogue before we
know what happens , we inevitably fall in love with our words; we’re
loath to play with and explore events, to discover how fascinating
our characters might become, because it would mean cutting our
priceless dialogue. All improvisation ceases and our so-called
rewriting is tinkering with speeches.

What's more, the premature writing of dialogue is the slowest
way to work. It may send you in circles for years before you finally
realize that not all your children are going to walk and talk their
way to the screen; not every idea is worth being a motion picture.
When do you want to find that out? Two years from now or two
months from now? If you write the dialogue first, you’ll be blind to
this truth and wander forever. If you write from the inside out,
you’ll realize in the outline stage that you can’t get the story to
work. Nobody likes it when pitched. In truth, you don’t like it. So
you toss it in the drawer. Maybe years from now you’ll pick it up
and solve it, but for now you go on to your next idea.

As I offer this method to you, I’m fully aware that each of us,
by trial and error, must find our own method, that indeed some
writers short-cut the treatment stage and produce quality screen¬
plays, and that in fact a few have written very well from the outside
in. But I’m also left to wonder what brilliance they might have
achieved had they taken greater pains. For the inside-out method is
a way of working that’s both disciplined and free, designed to
encourage your finest work.

FADE OUT

You have pursued Story to its final chapter, and, with this step,
taken your career in a direction many writers fear. Some, dreading
that awareness of how they do what they do would cripple their
spontaneity, never study the craft. Instead, they march along in a
lockstep of unconscious habit, thinking it’s instinct. Their dreams
of creating unique works of power and wonder are seldom, if ever,
realized. They put in long, tough days, for no matter how it’s taken,
the writer’s road is never smooth, and because they have a gift,
from time to time their efforts draw applause, but in their secret
selves they know they’re just taking talent for a walk. Such writers
remind me of the protagonist of a fable my father loved to recite:

High above the forest floor, a millipede strolled along the branch of
a tree, her thousand pairs of legs swinging in an easy gait. From
the tree top, song birds looked down, fascinated by the synchroniza¬
tion of the millipede's stride. “That's an amazing talent,” chirped
the songbirds. “You have more limbs than we can count. How do
you do it?” And for the first time in her life the millipede thought
about this. “Yes,” she wondered, “how do I do what I do?” As she
turned to look back, her bristling legs suddenly ran into one
another and tangled like vines of ivy. The songbirds laughed as the
millipede, in a panic of confusion, twisted herself into a knot and
fell to the earth below.

You too may sense this panic. I know that when confronted
with a rush of insights even the most experienced writer can be
knocked off stride. Fortunately, my father’s fable had an Act Two:

418

FADE OUT 4 419

On the forest floor, the millipede, realizing that only her pride was
hurt, slowly , carefully, limb by limb, unraveled herself With
patience and hard work, she studied and flexed and tested her
appendages, until she was able to stand and walk. What was once
instinct became knowledge. She realized she didn’t have to move at
her old, slow, rote pace. She could amble, strut, prance, even run
and jump. Then, as never before, she listened to the symphony of
the songbirds and let music touch her heart. Now in perfect com¬
mand of thousands of talented legs, she gathered courage and, with
a style of her own, danced and danced a dazzling dance that
astonished all the creatures of her world.

Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Keep
Story at hand. Use what you learn from it as a guide, until com¬
mand of its principles becomes as natural as the talent you were
born with. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagina¬
tion and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk
rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories
told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly.
Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.

INDEX

Accidental Tourist, The, 6,
36,49,50,55,59
Action/Adventure Genre,
36, 61, 82, 85,
91-92,107, 216,
406, 409. See also
Survival Films
heroes of, 213
Actors

as artists, 253
and subtext, 254-55
Acts, 41. See also Climax;
Endings; Inciting
incident; Scenes
design, 217-22
design variations,
222-25

false ending, 224-25
five or more act
structure, 219-22
last, climax, kinds of,
42,118-21

last, final condition, 41,
42

Mid-Act Climax, 220
and pacing, 289-91,
294

and progression,
118-19, 208-16,
294-301

reversal, 217-18, 220,
222-24

rhythm, 225-27
subplot/multiplot,
219-22, 226-32
three-act story, 218-17,
218-19

Adam's Rib, 223
Adaptation, 364-70
first principle of, 367
Addicted to Love, 125
Aesthetic emotion,

110-12

After Hours, 47, 52, 359,
406-7

Airplane, 360
Alice Doesn't Live Here
Anymore, 198
Alice in Wonderland, 85
Alien, 186-89, 22 4 > 4°6
Aliens, 224, 406
Alive, 82,124
All in the Family (TV
series), 382
All That Jazz, 85,128
Allen, Woody, 4,123, 344
Altman, Robert, 9, 56, 65
Amadeus, 366-67, 369,

39 I- 9 2
Amarcord, 65
And Justice for All, 126,
321-22

Angel Heart, 94
Animal Farm, 68, 85
Animal House, 320, 360
Animation, 85
Annie Hall, 125, 256-57,
362, 366
Anouilh, Jean, 12
Antagonism, Principle of,
317-18

contradictory value in,
318

design for story
analysis, 318-33
negation of the
negation, 318-19
Antiplot, 45-47, 64, 66
change versus stasis,
57-58

coincidence in, 52-53
ending, 60
and film budget, 63
inconsistent realities
in, 54-57
invention of, 350
quasi, 56
time in, 51-52
Apocalypse Now, 121
Arachnophobia, 124

Arc of the film, 41
Archer, William, 16
Archetypal story, 3-4
Archplot, 45-46, 64-65
and audience, 62-64
causality, 52
closed ending, 47-48
consistent realities,
53-57

external conflict,

48-49

protagonist, 49-51
scenes, number of, 210
time, 51

Aristotle, 5,11,13,79,

100,109, no, 186,
2 i 7 > 338 , 357 - 58 ,
376-77

Art Film, 7, 59-61, 63,

86,88-89
false ending, 225
and inciting incident,
204

Asian filmmaking, 14, 62
Astaire, Fred/Ginger
Roger films, 332
Audience

and act design, 217-18
bond, 141-43
Elizabethan, 90
emotional experience
of, 243-48

and entertainment as
ritual, 12

and gap, 179-80,
270-71

intelligence of, 6-7
and Obligatory Scene,
198-200

positioning the, 89-90
principles controlling
(empathy/authen¬
ticity), 186-89
reaction, 135-36,
179-80

457

458 ♦ INDEX

Audience ( cont .)
shrinking, vis-a-vis
choice of story
structure, 62-64
target, 240
August, Bille, 50
Authenticity in film,
186-89

Authorship, 185-89
Autobiography, 84
Avant-garde film-making,
64-65

Babe, 137
Babette’s Feast, 59
Baby Boom, 126
Backstory, 183, 231,
340-41, 348, 350
Bad el the Beautiful, The,

55

Bad Day at Black Rock, 55,
n 9

Bad Timing, /sfj, 51-52, 55
Bambi, 81
Barry Lyndon, 344
Barton Fink, 55, 56-57
Basic Instinct, 97
Battle of Algiers, 84
Battleship Potemkin, The,
20, 46, 68-69, T 3^’
366

Beat, 37-38, 258-59, 270,
286-87

Beckett, Samuel, 54
Being There, 327
Ben Hur, 366
Benchley, Peter, 196, 202
Bergman, Andrew, 3x9
Bergman, Ingmar, 4, 9,
65,72,112, 203, 394
Betrayal, 352
Betty Blue, 250
Big, 46, 55, 81, 330
Big Wednesday, 84
Big Sleep, The, 119
Billy Budd, 257
Biography, 84, 85,183
Birds, The, 125
Black Comedy, 82, 88,
321

Black Comedy (Shaffer),
217

Black Widow, 229
Blade Runner, The, 366,
379

Blazing Saddles, 64, 93
Blind Date, 107
Blocking Characters,
95-96

Blood of the Poet, 47
Blow Up, 55
Blue Velvet, 59
Bob Roberts, 59, 84
Body Heat, 97
Bond, James, 103-4,195,
213, 214, 306
Bonfire of the Vanities,

The, 369

Bostonians, The (James),
369

Bram Stoker's Dracula,

408

Brazil, 224

Breakfast Club, The, 136
Breathless, 65
Bridge on the River Kwai,
The (Boulle), 367-68
Bridges of Madison County,
96

Brief Encounter, 46, 97
Bringing Up Baby, 46,

300

Buddy Salvation Plot, 80,

85

Budget, and story
structure, 63-64
Bugs Bunny, 85,137
Bull Durham, 85
Bullets Over Broadway,

126

Bunker, Archie, 382
Bunuel, Luis, 407
Burke, Kenneth, 1
Burnett, Hallie and Whit,
21

Burroughs, William S., 54

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,
The, 46, 93
California scenes, 336
Cameron, James, 406
Camp Nowhere, 360
Cape Fear, 408
Caper Genre, 82
Carnal Knowledge, 193,
196, 337 . 338
Carpenter, John, 43-44
Casablanca, 20, 201, 223,
228, 229,260-70,
287, 288-89, 306,

3 IO > 333 - 342 - 43 - 353 -
371-72, 375, 377,
405-6
Casino, 128
Cassavetes, John, 9
Cast design, 183-85,
379-81

size of, 213, 214
Cavani, Liliana, 348-49
Center of Good, 347-49,

378 - 79

Chaplin, Charlie, 4
Character. See also
Protagonist
arc, 104-5
backstory, 183
biography of, 84, 85,

183

cast design, 183-85,

379- 81

climax and, 107-6
comic, 381-83
and contradiction,
379-80

dimension, 378-80
first step in creating,
143-45

and the gap, 147-49,
151-52,177-79,
270-71

revelation, 103-4
and risk/maturity,
149-51
screenplay of

Chinatown, 154-76,
178

structure and character
functions, 105-7
three levels of conflict,
146

three tips for writing,

383-87

true, 101, 375-77
versus characterization,
100-102
world of, 145-47
“Character as destiny,” 52
Character-driven story,

107

Chariots of Fire, 85
Chase sequence, 366
Chayefsky, Paddy, 118,

257

Cheap Surprise, 354, 355
Chekhov, Anton, 386

INDEX + 459

Chien Andalou, Un, 47
Chinatown, 55, 56, 97, 98,
119,124-25,154-76,
178, 201, 228,
236-37, 239, 240,
241, 256, 296, 301,
331-32, 336, 341, 351,
371, 406
Choose Me, 358
Christie, Agatha, 350
Chungking Express, 47
Citizen Kane, 46, 359-60
Claire’s Knee, 47
Classical Design, 44-46,
49-52

and audience, 62-64
and writer's craft,
64-65

Clean and Sober, 126
Cliche, 7, 67-68
action genre, 61
and Hollywood films,
61

and multiplication of
act climaxes, 221
overcoming, 76-78
and scenes leading to
climax, 293-94
and thriller, 87
transition, 301
Climax, 42, 220-22,
309-12. See also
Acts; Controlling
Idea; Endings
and character, 107-6
difficulty of writing,
206

and irony, 128-29
last act, 42, 206
Mid-Act Climax, 220
and mystery, 350-51
Penultimate, 224-25
positive/negative, 304
and reversal, 42, 309
rhythm and tempo,
291-94

and self-recognition,

118

Sequence Climax, 234
and Turning Point,
286-87, 304-5,
311-12

Clouzot, Henri-Georges,
402,405
Clowns, 47

Cocktail Party, The (Eliot),
367

Cocteau, Jean, 177
Cohn, Harry, 409
Coincidence, 356-59
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor,
186

Columbo (TV series), 117,
350
Comedy

comic character,

381-83

design, 361-62
genre, 19-20, 82,
87-88, 247
hybrids (Dramedy,
Crimedy), 362
problem of, 359-62
Coming Home, 328
Commercial films, bad
script, 23, 24
Composition
expressing
progression,
294-300

pacing, 289-91, 294
rhythm and tempo,
291-94

third thing, 301
transition, 301
unity and variety,
288-89

Computer Generated
Images (CGI),

24-25

Conflict, Law of, 210-13.
See also Antagonism,
Principle of
complication through
complexity, 213-15
conflict at three levels,
215

and scene analysis,

261, 268

Controlling Idea, 112,
114-17

and climax, last act,
119-21. See also
endings

components of, 115-16
in creative process,
117-18

and The Deer Hunter,
297

ironic, 125-28

and Kiss of the Spider
Woman, 231
and society, 129-31
and subplot, 219-22,
226-32

versus counter idea,
118-21

Conversation, The, 12, 87,
312

Cook, the Thief, His Wife e[
Her Lover, The, 220
Cool Hand Luke, 81
Cop, 94

Courtroom Drama, 82,

84.181, 229
Creative choices, 76-78
Creative limitation,

90-92

Crichton, Charles, 87
Cries and Whispers, 72
Crime and Punishment, 71,
3 2 3

Crimes and Misdemeanors,
97

Crime Story, 82, 86, 87,

92.114.116.119.181,
229

Crimedy, 362
Crisis, 303-4, 309
decision, 304, 308
design of, 307-9
placement, 306-7
Creative limitation, 71-72
Crying Game, The, 20, 55,
56, 96,194,196

Dance with a Stranger, 124
Dances with Wolves, 93
Dangerous Liaisons, 3, 59,
83, 96,116,117, 311,
369

David and Lisa, 94
Dead Ringers, 94
Death by Hanging, 47
Death in Venice, 207
Death Wish, 130
Deer Hunter, The, 126,
296-97, 308
Detective Genre, 82
on TV, 320-21
Diabolique, 402-4, 413
Dialogue, 388-90
description, 394-400
image systems,
400-408

460 4 INDEX

Dialogue ( cont .)
short speeches,

390-92

silent screenplay,

393-94

suspense sentence, 393
when to begin writing,
417

Dickens, Charles, 98
Didacticism, 121-23
Die Hard, 3, 36, 92,119
Diner, 136, 228
Dirty Dozen, The, 136
Dirty Harry, 116-17
Disaster/Survival Film,

82

Discreet Charm of the
Bourgeoisie, 57, 58,
222

Disillusionment Plot, 80,
81, 84, 85, 86, 87,

114

Do the Right Thing, 50, 59,
136, 228
Doctor, The, 126
Docu-Drama, 84
Documentaries, 47
Domestic Drama, 74, 82,
214, 356, 409
Dominick and Eugene, 189
Dona Flor and Her Two
Husbands, 46, 251
Dr. Strangelove, 55, 71,

122,360
Dracula, 324
Dramedy, 362
Dream Sequence, 343
Drugstore Cowboy, 59, 81
DuBois, Blanche, 137-38

Earthquake, 125
Eat Drink Man Woman,
20, 50,136, 228
Eco-Drama, 82
Education Plot, 36, 80,

81, 85,107,116,178,
292

8 1/2, 20, 47, 55, 65
Eisenstein, Sergei, 369,
407

Electric Horseman, The,
126,127

Elephant Man, The, 125
Elephant Walk, 358
Eliot, T.S., 133, 365

Empire Strikes Back, The,
236, 239, 241, 305,
336,341

Endings. See also Acts;
Climax

climax and character,
107-9, 3 IQ
closed versus open,
47-48

deus ex machina,

357-58, 361

down-ending films, 311
false, 224-25
idealistic, 123
ironic, 125-28
keys to, 310, 312
Obligatory Scene,
198-99

pessimistic, 124-25
placement of crisis and
climax at, 306-7
reversal, 217-18, 220,
309

English Patient, The, 61,

311

Equus, 94

Espionage Drama, 82
Esquivel, Laura, 4
E.T., 42, 224
Ethics (Aristotle), 11
European filmmaking, 14,
59-60, 204

European screenwriting,
education, 16-17
European Script Fund,
396

Everybody Says I Love You,

59

Evita, 85

Exposition, 328-29
California scenes, 336
pace, 336
withholding

information, 336

Fabulous Baker Boys, The,

55 - 56

Faces, 57, 58
Falling Down, 81
Falling in Love, 96
False Mystery, 354-55
Fantasy Genre, 53-54, 70,
85 -355

Farce, 64, 82, 85,107,

213

Farewell My Concubine,

337-338

Farewell, My Lovely, 119
Faulkner, William, 375
Feiffer, Jules, 193
Fellini, Federico, 65
Fields, Verna, 203
Fifth Element, The, 61
Film Noir, 82, 84
First Blood, 103
First Deadly Sin, The, 94,
230

First Deadly Sin, The
(Sanders), 230
Fish Called Wanda, A, 20,
46, 55,72, 88, 360,
361-62, 383
Fisher King, The, 59, 92,
126

Fitzcarraldo, 81,124
Five Easy Pieces, 47, 55, 56
Flashback, 341-42, 352
Flaubert, Gustave, 369
Flight of the Phoenix, 124
Foote, Horton, 9, 32, 44,
199

Forced Entry, 94
Ford, Harrison, 92
Ford, John, 407
Foreman, Carl, 368
Foreshadowing, 200
Forman, Milos, 369, 396
Forrest Gump, 25, 81
Forster, E. M., 369
400 Blows, The, 129
Four Weddings and a
Funeral, 46, 220
Fowler, Gene, 108
French Scenes, 292-93
Friedman, Norman, 80
Frost, Robert, 90
Frye, Christopher, 365
Fugitive, The, 36, 49-50,
119, 220, 290
Full Metal Jacket, 122

Gallipoli, 121
Gallo, George, 92
Gandhi, 84
Gangster Genre, 82
Gap

Casablanca, 270-71
and character
development,
147-49

INDEX * 461

Chinatown , 154-76
and comedy, 362
creating within, 177-79
and energy of story,
179-80

Love Serenade, 311-12
and point of no return,
208
Genres

and audience

expectations, 89-90
conventions, 87-89,

178

creative limitations,
90-82
history, 79

lists and film examples,
80-86

mastery of, 89-90
mixing and

reinventing, 92-98
and setting, 183
and Shakespeare, 90
shift in, 225
Ghost, 96
Ghostbusters, 12
Glengarry Glen Ross, 72
Glory, 83, 309
Godard, Jean-Luc, 54, 65
Godfather, The, 348
Godfather, The: Part II,

46, 207, 311

Goethe, von, Johann, 79
Going in Style, 126
Gold Rush, The, 361
Goldman, William, 310
Good Son, The, 94
Graduate, The, 95
Grand Canyon, 126
Grand Hotel, 50,137
Grand Illusion, 46
Great Gatsby, The, 81
Great Train Robbery, The,
46

Greed, 20, 46, 81,109, 312
Griffith, D. W., 293, 366,
407

Gross Pointe Blank, 81
Groundhog Day, 3,116,117
Guest, Judith, 205

Hamburger Hill, 121
Hamlet (character of),

105, hi, 378

Hampton, Christopher, 83

Hand That Rocks the
Cradle, The, 94
Hannah and Her Sisters,
17,123,126,136, 344
Harold and Maud, 81
Hart, Moss, 352
Heidegger, Martin, 211
Hemingway, Ernest, 98,
321

High Adventure Genre,
82, 85

High Hopes, 137
His Girl Friday, 360
Historical Drama, 83
Hitchcock, Alfred, 88-89,
225, 394, 407
Holes, 370-72
Hollywood films, 3
“big hook,” 198
budget, 63-64
and cliches, 61
and inciting incident,
204

number distributed per
year, 13'

rebellion against, 66
script development,
cost, 13-14
story analyst, 17-18
story submissions
accepted yearly, 13
studio system, 17
versus art film, 59-61
Hope and Glory, 136
Horror Film, 80, 213,406
and Cheap Surprise,

355

Supernatural, 80
Super-Uncanny, 80
Uncanny, 80
Hospital, 257
Hour of the Wolf, 80
Hurd, Gail Anne, 406
Hurricane, 358
Husbands, 57
Husbands and Wives, 96,
344

Husserl, Edmund, 66
Hustler, The, 46, 55, 81

I Never Promised You a
Rose Garden, 93-94

I Vitioni, 65

Idea. See Controlling Idea

II Postino, 59, 81

Image Systems,
400-408

Imaginary Invalid, The
(Moliere), 382
In-Laws, The, 313
In the Heat of the Night,
116,117

In the Realm of the Senses,

47 > 55 - 307

Inciting Incident, 181,
189-94, 208, 311,
318,356

and act design, 217-24
creating, 206-7
design of, 198-200
and flashback, 341
locating, 200-204
and Marx Brothers
film, 361
quality of, 204-7
Inner monologues, 177
Interview with a Vampire,
143

Intolerance, 50
Irony, 128-29
dramatic, 351-55
in endings/climax,
125-28

ironic ascension,
298-300
negative, 128,129
Isadora, 84

James, Henry, 206, 369
Jaws, 112,124,190-91,
197,198,199,
202-203, 288, 303,
356-57, 409
Jerry Maguire, 126
Jesus of Montreal, 225
JFK, 59, 345
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer,
369

John and Mary, 76
Joy Luck Club, The, 222
Joyce, James, 54
Ju Dou, 46
Jurassic Park, 358

Kasdan, Lawrence, 92
Kaufman, Phillip, 352
Key Images, 312
Kid, The, 312
King Lear (Shakespeare),
376-77

462 4 INDEX

Kiss of the Spider Woman,
107-8, 231-32
Kiss of the Spider Woman
(Puig), 231
Koyaanisqutsi, 47
Kramer vs. Kramer, 112,
125,126,198, 202,
206, 215-16, 221,
236, 288,307-8,
409

Kubrick, Stanley, 122

La Dolce Vita, 87,129,

312,409
La Notte, 198
La Promesse, 81
La Strada, 65
Lady Eve, The, 360
Last Days of Pompeii, The,
46

Last Emperor, The, 337,

338

Last Seduction, The, cyj
Last Year at Marienbad,
47, 57, 63, 68
Law of Diminishing
Returns, 244, 293,
393

Lawson, John Howard, 16
Le Feu Follet, 81
League of Their Own, A, 85
Lean, David, 368
Leaving Las Vegas, 3,96,
198, 222, 307
L’Eclisse, 81
Lenny, 87
Les Diabolique. See
Diabolique

Lethal Weapon, 94,362
Life Story, 31-32
Like Water for Chocolate, 4
Limitation of story, 71
Lion King, The, 3, 85
Little Big Man, 337, 338
Little Mermaid, The, 85
Little Shop of Horrors, 361
Lone Star, 96, 294
Loneliness of the Long
Distance Runner,

The, 85

Longing Story, 96
Looks and Smiles, 408
Lord Jim, 81
Lost Highway, 47
Love Serenade, 311-12

Love Story, 80, 84, 85, 86,
92, 95-98,114,116,
178, 214, 226, 229,
289, 310, 352
Loved One, The, 88
Lumet, Sidney, 292

M, 46, 55

Macbeth (Shakespeare),

81,142-43, 378
Maltese Falcon, The, 87
Mamet, David, 72
Man Bites Dog, 20, 59, 84
Man Who Would Be King,
The, 55, 82

Manchurian Candidate,
The, 325
Manhattan, 125
Manhunter, 94
Mark, The, 94
Marty, 46, 55
Marvin, Lee, 385
Marx Brothers films, 361
Masculine Feminine, 57, 58
M*A*S*H, 360
Maturation Plot, 81, 85,
90,120

McQuarrie, Christopher,
70

Mean Streets, 80
Medical Drama, 82,181
Melodrama, 370
Men in Black, 25, 295
Mephisto, 81, 326
Merrily We Roll Along
(Kaufman & Hart),
352

Meshes of the Afternoon,

47 > 55

Metamorphosis (Kafka),
202
Metz, 80

Michael Collins, 83
Midnight Cowboy, 189
Midnight Run, 92
Midsummer's Night Dream,
A (Shakespeare), 137,
227

Mike’s Murder, 90
Mind Worm, 374-75
minimalism. See miniplot
miniplot, 45-47, 64-65,
66

change versus stasis,

57-58

and film budget, 63
inconsistent realities,
53-57

internal conflict, 49
multiplot variation, 49,
56

negative ending, 59
open ending, 48, 57
protagonist, 49-51
and reversals, 222-24
Misanthrope, The
(Moliere), 382
Miser, The (Moliere), 382
Misfits, The, 87
Miss Julie (Strindberg),
217

Missing, 116,117, 321, 396
Moby Dick, 195
Mockumentary, 56, 84
Modern Epic, 81, 84, 85
Modem Times, 20
Mogamo, 409
Moliere, 98, 382
Moment by Moment, 408
Montage, 343-44
Monty Python and the
Holy Grail, 19, 47,

57- 64

Moonstruck, 197
Morning After, The, 94
Moulin Rouge, 299-300
Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington, 81
Mrs. Parker and the
Vicious Circle, 81
Mrs. Soffel, 95-96,

T 93 ~ 94 ’ I 9 &> 22 &
Multiplot, 49, 56,123-24,
226-32, 406
Murder Mystery, 82, 97,
342

Muriel’s Wedding, 81
Mumau, F. W., 407
Music Room, The, 47,198
Musical, 84, 289
Musical Horror Film,
92-93

My Best Friend’s Wedding,
81, 409

My Dinner with Andre, 68,
292-93

My Favorite Season, 356
My Man Godfrey, 362
Mystery, 349-51
and backstory, 350

INDEX + 463

diffhanger, 355
dosed, 350
false, 354-55
open, 350

and red herrings, 350

Naked, 57, 58
Naked Gun, 360
Naked Lunch, 214
Nanook of the North, 47
Nash, Richard, 35
Nashville, 55, 56,128,137
Nasty Habits, 360
Network, 128, 360
Newspaper Drama, 82
Night and Fog, 47
Night at the Opera, 360
Nightporter, The, 348-49
1984, 81
Nixon, 84,128
North Dallas Forty, 85,

126,127

O’Bannon, Dan, 187-89
Objective correlative, 66
Obligatory Scene,

198-200, 303, 308
Officer and a Gentleman,
An, 126

Oh! What a Lovely War,
121

Old Man and the Sea, The,
81

On the Waterfront, 201
Ordinary People, 6,126,
189, 204-5, 295-96,
309, 323

Othello, 226, 298-99
Out of Africa, 126,127
Outbreak, 340

Pacing, 289-91, 294
Paisan, 47

Paper Chase, The, 126
Parenthood, 3, 20, 49,136,
228

Paris, Texas, 47,48, 55
Parody, 82
Pascal, Blaise, 5
Pascali’s Island, 329
Passion de Jeanne D’Arc,
La, 47

Passion Fish, 80
Pat and Mike, 198
Paths of Glory, 122

Pelle the Conqueror, 47,

50,136, 369

People vs. Larry Flint, The,
81

Persona, 20, 47, 65,112,
409

Personal story, bad script,
22-23, 2 4

Phantom of Liberty, 58
Piano, The, 408
Pitch, 413-14
Plato, 129,130
Player, The, 13
Plot, 43. See also Archplot;
Antiplot; Climax,
Crisis; Inciting
Incident; Miniplot;
Structure; Subplot
Poetics, The (Aristotle), 5,
217

Point of View (POV)
character’s, 363-64
shots, 362-63
“Pointless pace killer,”

179

Points of no return,
208-10

Police Academy, 360
Political Drama/Allegory,
82, 85, 229, 289, 310
Political Thriller, 116
Politics

of story design, 58-66
of story's world, 182
Polti, 79-80
Poseidon Adventure, The,
82,124
Posse, 93

Postcards from the Edge, 3,
59

Postman Always Rings
Twice, The, 358
Premise, 112-13
Prison Drama, 82
Prizzi’s Honor, 88, 360
Producers, The, 360
Progression, 118-23, 2 °9
complication versus
complexity, 213-16
ironic, 298-300
law of conflict, 210-13,
261, 268

personal, 295-96
points of no return,
208-10

social, 294-95
symbolic ascension,
296-98

Protagonist, 136-41. See
also Character
and audience bond,
141-43

and gap, 147-49,
151-52,177-79,
270-71

and inciting incident,
181,191-94,

198-207

Multiprotagonist,

i 3 <S -37

Plural, 136
and quest, 196-97
screenplay of

Chinatown, 154-76,
178

single versus multiple,
49-50

and spine of story,
194-96

switch during story, 137
Private Benjamin, 360
Psycho, 137, 225
Psycho-Drama, 82, 92,

93 - 95

Psycho-Thriller, 75,

94- 95,114, 230
Puig, Manuel, 231
Pulp Fiction, 50,136
Punitive Plot, 81, 84, 85,

128

Puzo, Mario, 312

Q^A, 59, 97,119
Quartet, 369
Quest, 196-97
Quest for Fire, 124
Quiz Show, 126

Raging Bull, 85
Raiders of the Lost Ark, 19,
92, 220
Rain, 300
Rain Man, 126
Rainmaker, The, 34-35
Rambo, 103
Rashomon, 20
Ray, Satyajit, 4
Red, 96

Red Desert, The, 12,47, 55,
250

464 ♦ INDEX

Redemption Plot, 80, 81,
85, 92,107,126
Redford, Robert, 205
Regarding Henry, 126
Reiner, Rob, 56
Remains of the Day, 36,

96

Research, 72-76
and birth of characters,
74

fact, 73-74
imagination, 73
memory, 72-73
and progressive
complications, 213
Reservoir Dogs, 20, 342
Resnais, Alain, 47
Resolution, 312-14
Return of the Jedi, 236, 341
Revenge Tale, 82
Reversal, 217-18, 220,
225-27

Reversal of Fortune, 3, 20,

59

Rhys, Jean, 369
Rhythm, 291-93
Risky Business, 81
River Runs Through It, A,
47

River, The, 191
Road to Morocco, 64
Road Warrior, The, 49
Robbe-Grillet, Alain, 63
Robocop, 119
Rocky, 201-2, 223, 229
Rocky IV, 402
Roma, 84

Romantic Comedy, 82,
360

Romy and Michele’s High
School Reunion, 80
Room With a View, A
(Forster), 369
Rose, The, 128
Rosemary's Baby, 324
Rossen, Robert, 257
Rowe, Kenneth, 16
Ruling Class, The, 360
Running, Jumping, and
Standing Still Film,
The, 47

Running on Empty, 59
Ruthless People, 299

Sacrifice, The, 47

Salt, Waldo, 189
Salvador, 59
Sanders, Lawrence, 230
Sargent, Alvin, 189, 205
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 211, 212
Satire, 82

Saturday Night Fever, 81
Scarlet Letter, The, 369
Scenes, 35-37. See also
Composition
and beats, 217, 258-59,
270,286-87
closing value, 259, 270,
286

crisis, 303-9
emotional transitions,
243-48

French Scenes, 292-93
Law of Diminishing
Returns, 244, 293
length of, 291-92
mood, 247-48
number of in Archplot,
210

number of in three-act
story, 218-19
number of in two-hour
film, 291, 415
Obligatory, 199-200,
303,

opening value, 258,

259, 261, 270, 272,

286

"pointless pace killer,”
179

Sequence Climax, 234
Setups/Playoffs, 238-43,
271-72

text and subtext,

252-57

transition/Third Thing,
301-2

Turning Points, 74,
209, 217, 233-38,
243, 248-51, 259,

270- 71, 286-87
writing, specifics to do,

395-400

Scene analysis, 257-59
Casablanca, 260-70,

287

Through a Glass Darkly,

271- 87

Scent of Green Papaya,
The, 56

Science Fiction, 85
Schiller, von, Johann, 79
Schindler’s List, 81,126
Schrader, Leonard,

231-32

Scott of the Antarctic, 125
Screwball Comedy, 82
Sea of Love, 120, 229
Sequence, 38. See also act
three scene example,
38-41
Serpico, 189

Setting, 68-72,181-85,
217

and creative limitation,
7:1-72

duration, 68
and genre, 183
level of conflict, 69
location, 69
and mood, 247-48
period, 68
place, 69
politics of setting
world, 182

rituals of setting world,
182-83

values of setting world,
183

versus story, 72
Setups/Playoffs, 238-43,
271-72

Seven, 94, 97,119
Seven Samurai, The, 46,
55 . 56 ,136

Seventh Seal, The, 46, 312
Shaffer, Peter, 369,
391-92, 393

Shakespeare, William, 90,
95 - 365,369- 407
filmed works, 366
five act structure,
220-21

Shall We Dance, 47, 81
Sheltering Sky, The, 400
Shine, 12,46,120, 220,
323,337

Shining, The, 80
Ship of Fools, 50
Shortcuts, 50, 57, 58,137,
227, 228

Shot in the Dark, A,
382-83

Silence of the Lambs, The,

n 9 > 349

INDEX « 465

Silence, The, 65, 393-94
Silent Era of film, 366
Single White Female, 94
Sitcom, 82
Six Guns and Society
(Wright), 81
Sleeping with the Enemy,
94

Sleepless in Seattle, 96
Slice-of-life works, 58
Sling Blade, 312
Snake Pit, The, 93
Snow White and the Three
Stooges, 129

Soap Opera, 213, 214, 216
Social Drama, 82, 84-85,
92,121-22
Solaris, 85

Somebody Up There Likes
Me, 85

Somewhere in Time, 85
Sound of Music, The, 400
Spartacus, 81
Speed, 119, 222
Spielberg, Steven, 202-3
Spine (through-

line / super obj ective)
of story, 194-96, 338
Sports Genre, 85, 201,

229

Stand by Me, 81
Stanislavski, Konstantin,
65,112
Star ‘80 ,128
Star Wars, 85, 256, 305,
34^409

Steel Magnolias, 314
Step-outline, 412-15
expansion of, 415
Stereotypical story, 4-5
Stolen Children, 47
Stone, Oliver, 345
Storm Over Asia, 366
Story event, 33-35, 37. See
also scene
Story values, 34
Storytelling, 113
Stranger Than Paradise,

47

Strangers in Paradise, 359
Strangers When We Meet,
96-97

Straw Dogs, 36
Stream of Consciousness
work, 213, 214, 216

Streetcar Named Desire, A,
137-38, 324

Strindberg, August, 54,
217

Stripes, 360

Structure of story, 32-33.
See also Acts;
Character; Climax;
Endings; Inciting
Incident

active versus passive
protagonist, 50-51
Archplot, Miniplot,
Antiplot, 43-47
causality versus
coincidence, 52-53
change versus stasis,

57 - 58

and character
functions, 105-7
classical design,

44-46, 52
closed versus open
endings, 47-49
consistent versus
inconsistent
realities, 53-57
creative limitation,
90-92

design, five-part,

181-85

external versus internal
conflict, 48-49
and film budget, 63-64
and genre, 86-89,
90-98

linear versus nonlinear
time, 51-52
nonplot, 58, 60
“pointless pace killer,”
179

politics of story design,

58- 66

quest theme, 196-97
as rhetoric, 113-14
setting, 68-72,181-85
single versus multiple
protagonists, 49-50
subplot/multiplot,
219-22, 226-32
Sturges, Preston, 9
Style, adding vividness to,
395-97

Subplot, 219-22, 226-32
and resolution, 312-14

Sudden Impact, 119
Sullivan's Travels, 201,
239-40, 241, 301
Sunrise, 366

Sunset Boulevard, 84, 352
Superman, 318
Surprise, 355-56
Cheap, 354, 355
Survival Films, 124,125
Suspense sentence, 393
Suspense story, 351
Sweet Smell of Success,

The, 326

Swimmer, The, 227-28
Sword in the Stone, The, 85
Sybil, 93

Tarantino, Quentin, 342
Tarkovsky, Andrei, 85
Taxi Driver, 201
Technical advances in
film, and story,

24-25

Tempo, 293-94
30,126

Tenant, The, 80, 326
Tender Mercies, 19, 32, 43,
44, 47, 55, 81,197,
199-200, 290, 303
Terminator, 20, 224-25,
297-98, 372, 379,

385

Terms of Endearment, 126,
127

Testament, 408
Testing Plot, 81, 85
Text and subtext, 252-57
That Obscure Object of
Desire, 4TJ, 55
Thelma el Louise, 46, 55,
136, 306, 308
They Shoot Horses, Don’t
They?, 128
Third Thing, 301
This is Spinal Tap, 3, 84,
360

Thoreau, Henry David,
139

Three Faces of Eve, The,

93

3 Women, 55, 56
Thriller Genre, 82, 87,

178, 226, 229, 247,

353-54, 355- 407- See

also Psycho-Thriller

466 « INDEX

Through a Glass Darkly,

50, 203, 271-86,

406

Tightrope, 94
Titles, 408-9
poor, 90
To Die For, 84
Toller, Ernst, 54
Tootsie, 126, 300
Top Hat, 46, 55
Total Recall, 85
Towne, Robert, 154
screenplay of

Chinatown, 154-76
Trading Placets, 234, 235,
360

Trainspotting, 6
Trans-Europ-Express, 57
Treasure of the Sierra
Madre, The, 81, 312
Treatment, 413-16
Truffaut, Francois, 9,312
Turning Points, 74, 209,
217, 233-37

and backstory, 346, 341
and characters’ choices,
248-51

and climax, 311-12
and comedy, 362
and emotional

transitions, 243-48
and flashback, 341
and problem of
interest, 346
and question of self-
expression, .237-38
scene analysis, 270-71,
286-87

Twelve Angry Men, 292
Twenty Bucks, 227
2001: A Space Odyssey, 46

Ulysses (Joyce), 367
Umberto D, 57, 58

Un Chien Andalou, 64
Unbearable Lightness of
Being, The, 358
Unforgiven, 20, 83, 93
Unmarried Woman, An,
126, 206-7

Usual Suspects, The, 70,

35 1

Verdict, The, 104, 222,

229

Vertigo, 20,119, 225
Viridiana, 407
Viva Zapata!, 81
Voice-over narration,
344-45

Von Stroheim, Erich,

109

Wall Street, 81,128, 234,
235, 325

War and Peace, 71
War and Peace (Tolstoy),
137

War Genre, 81
War of the Roses, The, 88,
125,128, 311
Watership Down, 68
Wayne’s World, 47, 55, 64
Wedding, A, 137
Weekend, 47, 54, 55, 64,

65 . 359
Welfare, 47
West Side Story, 85
Western Genre; 81, 86,

93,192, 407
Wild Strawberries, 47 ■
When Harry Met Sally, 55,
56, 96, 360

Whispers in the Dark, 94
White Men Can’t Jump, 85
Who Framed Roger Rabbit,
20, 53-54

Wild Strawberries, 343

Winter Light, 55, 81
Witches of Eastwick, The,
124,136

Witness, 95, 226
Wizard of Oz, The, 70,
129, 223-24
Woman’s Film, 82
Woolf, Virginia, 54
Wright, Will, 81
Writers Guild of America,
script registration
service, 15
Writing for film
authorship, 185-89
believing in what you
write, 65-66
earning a living,

61-64

endurance, 98-99
from the inside out,
152-76, 412-17
from the outside in,
410-12

mastering classical
form, 64-65
and Mind Worm, 374
as poet, 400-408
and risk/maturity,
149-51

screenplay length, 415
step outline, 412-15
style, tips on, 395-97
treatment, 406-8

Yeats, William Butler, 13
Yellow Submarine, The, 85
Young Frankenstein, 360
Young Mr. Lincoln, 84

Zed el Two Noughts, A, 47,

55

Zedung, Mao, 406
Zelig, 84

Zero de Conduite, 47